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Picture Perfect!- Art Therapy for Mental Illness

by Tanya Thomas on Jul 10 2008 10:44 AM

A new study has found art therapy, a therapy through visual art, to be a viable treatment option for people with mental disease.

Art therapy was started in the middle of the 20th century and is based on the idea that visual representations, objectified through plastic material, contribute to the construction of a meaning of the psychic conflicts, and favor its resolution.

Lead researcher Elizaberta Lopez Perez, a Bachelor of Fine Arts and doctor in Painting at the University of Granada conducted the study over 20 acute mental patients from the Therapeutic Community of the Northern Area of the Virgen de las Nieves Hospital of Granada

The participants took part in two days a week session and they adapted paintings of artists such as Modigliani, Munch or Van Gogh, offering their own vision.

The researcher of the University of Granada highlights the liberating nature of art for these patients, who project their inner world and their repressed desires through their paintings.

This way, they deal with their fears and desires, which get real during the artistic process where it is possible to give them life or to destroy them.

Source-ANI
TAN/M


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