[Symposium 4] Art and Trauma

[SY-4] Art and Trauma

Kanako Shimizu⁴, Naoko Miyaji², Pablo Farias³, Jaswant Guzder¹ (1.University of British Colombia, Department of Psychiatry(Canada), 2.Graduate School of Social Sciences Hitotsubashi University(Japan), 3.Bats'i Lab, a community program focused on social movements and photography(Mexico), 4.Rokubancho Mental Clinic, Japan depression center(Japan))

Keywords:

Art,Trauma,Art therapy,Culture,Grief

The use of art is increasingly relevant and emerging in global mental health. However, therapeutic significance and potential in healing for creative arts are shown in non-verbal communication, that fact presents us with the challenges in modern psychiatry. Every culture since ancient times has sought to express their emotions through art arousing a range of emotional states including joy, awe, grief and despair that are a universal offering of solace and connection. Trauma tears apart our heart. War and disaster tear apart our families and society. However, art has offered us a route to repair fragmented and broken hearts. The arts often reach into generational, mythic and folk bonds that offer a creative reclamation of longstanding cultural resonances including local monuments and songs. Art therapy has been an integral part of psychiatric care and assessment for traumatized children and youth, especially evident in therapeutic approaches in the post-World war, and children affected by historical genocides including post-slavery trauma, and indigenous cultural genocide. Moreover, mental health care professionals facing trauma may also soothe their emotional impact through creative arts. In this symposium, we will pursue a dialogue on the possibilities of art in relation to clinical mental health practice related to trauma and grief based on work across varied global contexts. The speakers will relate their experiences and therapeutic implications of how art and art therapy allow us to apply these methods to collective and individual trauma implicating cultural, historical, and spiritual issues and their emerging role relevant to the future of psychiatry in rapidly changing contemporary society.