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Structured Abstract
Background
Trauma can impact an individual's ability to process memories, develop a healthy identity, express emotions, maintain focus, navigate relationships, and achieve goals. Despite the potential negative impacts of trauma, specific psychotherapeutic interventions and trauma-informed care provide opportunities for recovery and healing.
Context
Creative processes can promote trauma recovery. The literature suggests that creativity can support people in non-verbally processing memories, containing internal chaos, and restoring hope.
Approaches
Case examples highlight the approaches of an art therapist, social worker, and psychiatrist who introduced arts-based interventions to traumatized clients. The art therapist explores use of an ancient Japanese approach to repairing pottery with a 23-year-old who experienced sexual abuse and neglect. The social worker discusses how Janusian thinking and “creative destruction” inspired collage-making with a 15-year-old who witnessed domestic violence and experienced depressive symptoms. The psychiatrist considers how traumatic memory processing theory informed her structured drawing approach to traumatic grief work with an aggressive 10-year-old.
Outcomes
Use of arts-based interventions assisted in overcoming client resistance to “talk therapy” approaches, offering a non-verbal, expressive alternative and supporting client progress toward treatment goals.
Implications for Practice
Reflection on three case vignette led to several practice implications: (1) Professionals should use creative approaches carefully and responsibly, operating within their scope of practice, (2) Professionals should consider how arts-based interventions can strengthen trauma treatment, & (3) Increased provider collaboration and cross-disciplinary dialogue can enhance trauma informed care.
Implications for Research
More research on the effectiveness of creative approaches in trauma treatment is needed.
Plain-language summary
Trauma effects people in many ways. Some people have trouble talking about what happened to them. Others have trouble understanding who they are and where they fit in the world. Trauma makes it hard for people to focus, express themselves, and connect with others.
Creativity can help people work through their trauma. Art helps people express themselves when they don’t have the words to explain what they have been through. Art helps people feel calmer, stronger, and more hopeful.
This article includes three examples of how art helped people work through their trauma. An art therapist talks about how she used broken pottery to help a 23-year-old girl reflect on who she was and where she wanted to go. A social worker talks about how she used paint and ripped pieces of paper to help a 15-year-old girl share her feelings of sadness and hope. A psychiatrist talks about how she helped a 10-year-old boy draw about his mother’s death so that he could get his anger under control.
The art therapist, the social worker, and the psychiatrist found that helping people use art to deal with trauma was helpful. It gave people a way to express themselves when they didn’t feel like talking. It helped people move forward.
The information in this article is helpful for other professionals who want to use art in their work with people who have gone through trauma. Art is a powerful tool, and professionals should think carefully about how they use it with people. They should also think about ways that they can work together as they help clients make art and deal with trauma. When professionals work together, they can support each other and learn from one another.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Meagan Corrado
Meagan Corrado is a Doctor of Social Work and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. As the owner and founder of Storiez Trauma Narratives, she has authored 10 books and trained over 8,000 clinicians, community leaders, and trauma survivors across 22 innovative training programs. Dr. Meagan earned her Doctorate of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and her Masters of Social Services from Bryn Mawr College in 2009. She is an Assistant Professor at West Chester University in their Masters of Social Work program. She has instructed graduate-level social work students at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Meagan specializes in work with children and teenagers who have experienced difficult life experiences. She takes a creative approach to her work with children, adolescents, and families, incorporating elements of art, music, poetry, and play therapy in her clinical practice. She also engages in her own creative practice, using mosaic, alcohol ink, collage, and resin as a way to process her own experiences of trauma and resilience. Dr. Meagan completed training in a variety of modalities, including Childhood Sexual Abuse Treatment, Trauma-Focused CBT, CBT, Prolonged Exposure Therapy, and Narrative Exposure Therapy. Her experience includes clinical work in a variety of settings, including community mental health agencies, residential treatment facilities, schools, and homes. More recently, Dr. Meagan has supported systems in implementing trauma-informed practices. She has worked collaboratively with the City of Philadelphia's Office of Homeless Services, the Philadelphia Police Department, Philadelphia's Department of Human Services, and the American Institutes for Research.
Denise Wolf
Denise Wolf has worked with children, adolescents, and families for over 20 years, guiding clients on courageous journeys. Denise works as a consultant for a residential treatment facility for adolescents providing Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) training, as well as facilitating DBT skills groups for adolescents and their caregivers. In addition to client services, Denise is an adjunct professor at Drexel University in the Art Therapy and Counseling graduate program, and at Villanova University in the Masters in Counseling program.Denise is a practicing DBT clinician, with a strong trauma informed background. Areas of strength include application of the evidenced based practices; Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), and Prolonged Exposure (PE), integration of mindfulness practices to foster emotion regulation, work with adolescents and families, facilitation of groups and group dynamics, provision of school based services, and working within systems. Denise also has extensive experience providing school based clinical services, utilizing her expertise as both therapist and an educator.Denise Wolf holds a Masters of Art in Art Therapy, is a Registered, Board Certified Art Therapist and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Denise also holds status as an Art Therapy Certified Supervision (ATCS). The ATCS is designed for ATR-BCs who have acquired specific training and skills in clinical supervision. Working with an ATCS ensures that current art therapy students and early-career practitioners receive the best art therapy clinical supervision available. In addition, Denise holds a Level II Pennsylvania State certification in both Art Education and Special Education N-12. Denise is an active member of many professional associations including the American Art Therapy Association the Pennsylvania Art Therapy Association, and Specialists of Schools.
Lyndra Bills
Dr. Lyndra Bills is the creator and founder of Trauma Art Narrative Therapy™. Dr. Bills completed a BS in Chemistry at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Tx. From there, she completed her medical degree at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She then moved east to complete an internal medicine and psychiatry residency program at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. Dr. Bills had the great fortune of being mentored while at WVU by Louis Tinnin MD. Dr. Tinnin supported and fostered the study of traumatic stress and PTSD. He actually developed a PTSD fellowship at WVU in the department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry and Dr. Bills was one of the first two residents to participate in this fellowship. Dr. Bills benefitted from a rich clinical experience with effects of traumatic events upon both the mind and the body during her training. She was also fortunate to have been introduced to social psychiatry practice and the importance of the therapeutic milieu, the significance of brain biology and pharmacology, the potential for somatic representation of traumatic stressors, and to the benefits of nonverbal and creative therapies. In addition, Dr. Bills joined Dr. Sandra L. Bloom, the developer of the Sanctuary® Model of trauma-informed care. In her clinical, teaching and training roles with the founding Sanctuary team, she helped to develop Sanctuary-S.E.L.F. as an organizational and clinical construct. Dr. Bills has synthesized trauma treatment methodology as well as a comprehensive therapeutic model within the structure of Trauma Art Narrative Therapy. During residency, Dr. Bills worked with Dr. Tinnin and Carmello Tabone ATR to use art techniques to help resolve the effects of trauma. Dr. Tinnin continued his work and teaching a specific trauma treatment intensive at Intensive Trauma Therapy, Inc. Dr. Bills developed what is now Trauma Art Narrative Therapy™ and has been using TANT since 1993 in a wide variety of clinical settings with both adults and children. Dr. Bills provides TANT™ workshop training and technical support. She continues to practice psychiatry as well. Besides TANT, Dr. Bills enjoys horses, dogs, and the great outdoors. She is a native Texan and likes to see if she can bring a little bit of Texas and the west wherever she goes.