Depression Learning

Depression and Art Therapy

Many individuals suffering from depression symptoms have gone through very traumatic experiences in their lives. These experiences may be so traumatic that the depressed individual may not be able to speak about these experiences in words. It has long been known that talking about painful experiences is difficult for many people, especially depressed people. The talking cure was made famous by the early pioneers in psychology such as Dr. Sigmund Freud and his student Dr. Karl Jung who got their patients to talk out what bothered them. However, many therapists find that their depressed patients are just too despondent to talk or others don’t want to talk about their experiences because they are just too painful. These behaviors are seen a lot from rape victims and people suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The ravishes of war and rape can be so painful that the depressed person just does not have the words to express them.

The early psychoanalysts were keenly aware of how hard it was to express such painful memories in the conscious modality. They in turn devised methods to reach the unconscious mind. Dr. Freud concentrated on dreams as pathways to the unconscious and Dr. Jung devised the free association test where the therapists would say a word and the patient would respond with the first thing that came to his or her mind.>/p>

Dr.Hermann Rorschach got the idea for his inkblots test from his children who were staring up into the clouds and defining shapes from the cloud formation. He too got the idea that meaningless inkblot shapes could be a way to harness the unconscious. With the Rorschach test, patients are asked to explain what these shapes look like to them. This indirect approach can help therapists to unravel what is bothering them on the subconscious level and thus explain certain fears and anxieties that may not be apparent in the conscious state.

Therapists have been very successful in unraveling the depression and problems of depressed children through art therapy. This is especially true for children who are too young to verbalize, or children who have experienced something terrible like child molestation. Teenagers are also a very difficult group to work with because they are very concerned with what their peers will think of them. A teenager suffering from depression is not likely to open up to a therapist or even go willingly to see one because they are afraid of what their friends and schoolmates will think about them. The last thing an adolescent wants is to be labeled as crazy. Adolescents, just by virtue of their age, can be very secretive and will not openly talk about the depression symptoms with therapists or their families. The talking therapies are very threatening for them.

However, adolescents are drawn to art therapy. They can make a collage or a drawing of what is bothering them. The therapist will pass no judgment on the drawings. The teenagers can express as much or as little of the meaning behind their art as they feel comfortable with. Teenagers are drawn to symbols and other nonverbal language. Furthermore, if they express a negative feeling in symbolic form it is distanced from them as a person and they are more comfortable in revealing this part of their psyche.

Our first experiences, or memories as humans are expressed as images. We form mental pictures in our minds and so art therapy taps into this modality of communication. Combined with other forms of verbal language and therapies, art therapy can cure depression in individuals of all ages. Art therapy has wonderful healing properties for anyone young and old alike

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