Art therapy may offer treatment for mental disease

Washington, July 9 : Art therapy, a therapy through visual art, can offer a treatment option for people with mental disease, suggests a new study.

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 favour 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.

ANI