What Soldiers can Teach Therapists who Work with Trauma: A Qualitative Examination of Contemporary American War Writing
Publication date: Available online 21 December 2018Source: The Arts in PsychotherapyAuthor(s): Haen CraigAbstractEight contemporary memoirs and biographies focused on American soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan were used as data sources for a qualitative investigation of war and its aftermath. Coding of these texts produced 6 themes that captured the experiences of soldiers in combat: Two Worlds (Away and Home); Teach you with Pain; the Ideal of Hero/ Be a Man; Male Intimacy/ Belonging; Old Me, New Me; and the Inevitability of Death. These themes are discussed as they inform an understanding of how soldiers are bo...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - December 22, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The Difficult Return: the arts and social health of returning military personnel
Publication date: Available online 13 December 2018Source: The Arts in PsychotherapyAuthor(s): Michael BalfourAbstractThere is a rich history of arts, mental health and military work dating back to the First World War. The article details an arts-based four-year research project focussed on work with returning military personnel and their families dealing with mental health issues. The Difficult Return, funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant, consisted of three distinct interventions: an online mental health awareness campaign; a documentary-play designed to motivate military audience to seek help; and a ...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - December 14, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Art therapy for the prevention of cognitive decline
This study used structured art therapy that was introduced as a 9-month randomized control trial of older adults with MCI (N = 68). The trial involved three arms, art therapy (N = 22), music reminiscence activity (N = 24) and a control group (no treatment; N = 22). Both art therapy and music reminiscence activity were conducted weekly for 3 months and then fortnightly for 6 months. Art therapy comprised of two structured components, physical creation of art pieces and the cognitive evaluation of paintings. The primary outcome, cognitive performance on neuropsychological tests, showed significant improvement...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - December 11, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Verbal affordances of active and receptive music therapy methods in major depressive disorder and schizophrenia-spectrum disorder
Publication date: Available online 11 December 2018Source: The Arts in PsychotherapyAuthor(s): Carol LotterAbstractPrevious research on active and receptive music therapy methods mostly reports on response to musical processes and therapeutic impact. Preceding such interests, our study examined qualitatively the verbal affordances during a course of eight individual music therapy sessions among twenty participants with a major depressive disorder or a schizophrenia-spectrum psychotic disorder. Audio-video recordings of 131 sessions were transcribed verbatim and subjected to thematic analysis, following which comparisons fo...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - December 11, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The use of improvisational theater training to reduce social anxiety in adolescents
Publication date: Available online 3 December 2018Source: The Arts in PsychotherapyAuthor(s): Peter Felsman, Colleen Seifert, Joseph A. HimleAbstractAdolescents do not receive the mental health treatment they need for Social Anxiety Disorder. Improvisational theater involves regular exposure to social performance situations, and is recognized as a potential psycho-social intervention. The current study examines whether participating in a school-based improvisational theater program predicts reductions in symptoms of social anxiety. A total of 268 middle and high school students who participated in a ten-week school-based i...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - December 4, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Movement speaks of culture: A study focusing on women with depression in Taiwan
This article firstly explores a study which examined the movement characteristics and the psychological constructs of women with depression in Taiwan. Secondly, interpretations of cultural meanings from the perspective of individualism/collectivism are made. Data gathering tools employed in this study are repertory grid technique from personal construct psychology and Laban Movement Analysis (LMA). Initial results showed that women with depression use less sagittal movement than women without depression. In addition, it was found that the distances between social roles and actual/ideal self were correlated to depression. T...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - December 2, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Dance movement therapy with older people with a psychiatric condition: A systematic review
Publication date: Available online 26 November 2018Source: The Arts in PsychotherapyAuthor(s): J. Jiménez, I. Bräuninger, B. MeekumsAbstractThis systematic review assessed the published literature on dance movement therapy interventions with adults aged 60 years and older with a mental health disorder. Our objective was to identify published studies of the effects of DMT in older age psychiatry and to critically appraise methodological quality of the included studies.We searched the databases CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and PSYNDEX, and Google Scholar. We also searched the reference list of relevant papers in order to ide...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - November 27, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Group art therapy for the management of fear of childbirth
ConclusionsOur findings suggest that art therapy is an efficient method for reducing clinical FOC and levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms in pregnant women in the final trimester. This arts therapy programme enabled these shifts in behaviour by helping women face and express their fears through their artwork (drawing) and then gain control over their fears (mandala-making, puppet-making, taking photographs and collage-making) within a secure base and an on-going social support system provided by the group structure. Group art therapy seems to be a cost-effective therapeutic approach for targeting a larger number of p...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - November 27, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: November 2018Source: The Arts in Psychotherapy, Volume 61Author(s): (Source: Arts in Psychotherapy)
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - November 25, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Submitting works for publication: Helping authors learn good practice
Publication date: November 2018Source: The Arts in Psychotherapy, Volume 61Author(s): Jane Edwards, Helen Payne (Source: Arts in Psychotherapy)
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - November 25, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Songs created by military service members in music therapy: A retrospective analysis
This study analyzed 14 songs written by 11 active-duty service members with post-traumatic stress disorder, mild traumatic brain injury, and psychological health conditions, who received music therapy services at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, a Directorate of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the United States of America. Service members wrote songs over the course of two or more individual music therapy sessions. Latent thematic analysis of the song lyrics yielded four main themes: (a) personal struggles and barriers to recovery, (b) moving forward, (c) relational challenges, and (d) positive r...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - November 18, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Associations between Music and the Sensory System: Integrative Review for Child Therapy
Publication date: Available online 16 November 2018Source: The Arts in PsychotherapyAuthor(s): Vered Simhon, Cochavit Elefant, Hod OrkibiAbstractSensory processing disorder (SPD) is a disruption in the organization of sensory input that affects appropriate responses to the demands of the environment. The consequences of SPD in children may include a developmental lag as well as behavioral and emotional problems. Music therapy is particularly suitable for children with a sensory processing disorder because music and the sensory system are both linked to the nervous system. This suggests there is a need to better understand ...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - November 17, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Thawing Out: Therapy Through Theatre with Canadian Military Veterans
This article explores Contact!Unload, a theatre project in which military veterans, with the support of artists, community members, and counselors, performed what it means to transition back to civilian life after serving their country. The play features therapeutic enactment, an approach to address psychological injuries veterans might face while serving. Various iterations of the play have been performed across Canada and the UK, each featuring a minimum of four veterans. Through extensive interviews with veterans who performed in the production, this article unpacks how creating, rehearsing, and performing in Contact!Un...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - November 6, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Preliminary Validation of the Peri-Traumatic Dissociation Trauma Drawing Assessment (PDTDA): The Case of Military Trauma
Publication date: Available online 3 November 2018Source: The Arts in PsychotherapyAuthor(s): Neta Ram-Vlasov, Limor Goldner, Rachel Lev-WieselAbstractThe Peri-Traumatic Dissociative Traumatic Drawing Assessment (PDTDA) is an art-based assessment technique developed to evaluate peri-traumatic dissociation subsequent to traumatic events, based on the trauma resolution and time perception literature. To validate the PDTDA, associations between six drawing feature scales; namely, the participants’ peri-traumatic dissociation, persistent dissociation, post-traumatic stress symptoms and history of traumatic events were assess...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - November 4, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Evaluation of long- and short-term art therapy interventions in an integrative care setting for military service members with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury
This study provides findings from analyses of participant feedback on short- and long- term art therapy services for military service members with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury (TBI).Methods: Data for the study included feedback surveys from 204 service members who received art therapy services as part of treatment at an integrative care setting.Results: The results indicate that long-term art therapy resulted in higher satisfaction with treatment. Art therapy helped most with developing a sense of self after injury, experiencing positive emotions, processing trauma, and reducing feelings of guilt, grief...
Source: Arts in Psychotherapy - October 30, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
