Mini-Intensive Workshop “Art Therapy in the Work with Psychological Trauma”

On October 18, 2023, TNMU Department of Psychiatry, Narcology and Medical Psychology held mini-intensive workshop “Art therapy in the work with psychological trauma”.

During the event, Assistant Professors of the Department Tetiana Ivanitska and Marianna Koval gave a short lecture about what art therapy is, its types and basic principles of work.

Intern psychiatrists Anastasia Danyliuk, Iryna Hovda, Vita Holub and Tetiana Kantytska together with the participants of the event showed several art therapy techniques for relieving psychological tension, stress and improving mood.

In total, 25 students of different years of study attended the workshop.

Art therapy is an extremely powerful psychotherapeutic tool that helps to release everything hidden, secret, unconscious. That censorship of consciousness, which often does not let through, cuts off all verbal “intentions” and mental forms, turns out to be completely powerless in front of images created by man. The transfer of traumatic experience to pictorial materials and images also makes the art therapy process psychologically safe for the client and the therapist and provides additional opportunities for reflection and cognitive processing of experiences based on metaphors and means of symbolic communication. Having such a method “in the arsenal” when working with people who have experienced psychological trauma is a very important skill in today’s historical events.