Elsevier

The Arts in Psychotherapy

Volume 49, July 2016, Pages 57-65
The Arts in Psychotherapy

Out of our mind. Art therapy and mindfulness with refugees, political violence and trauma

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2016.05.012Get rights and content

Highlights

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    In this paper we consider the combination of art therapy and mindfulness in work with refugees and asylum seekers.

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    This research acknowledges human suffering while not reducing this to biology and pathology and acknowledges the search for health and growth.

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    The combination of art therapy and mindfulness is represented by eleven different features.

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    These features serve to advance the dialogue between art therapy and mindfulness in this context.

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    Examples will be given from a short term art therapy and mindfulness workshop. All names presented here are pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality.

Abstract

Combining art therapy and mindfulness in meeting the needs of refugees and asylum seekers is a novel innovation. This paper presents the integration of these approaches, and draws on examples from a short term art therapy and mindfulness meditation studio group, named Inhabited Studio. Art therapy and mindfulness are demonstrated to complement each other, and where there are points of divergence these are indicated. Consideration is given to how these approaches can be combined to help individuals build strategies for safety, support resilience, and work with multiple levels of loss, after extreme and traumatic experiences. The article considers eleven features of the combination of art therapy and mindfulness meditation. Results of implementation of the treatment approach indicate that, when combined, mindfulness and art therapy address different aspects of the individual experience, and social context, through engagement in processing.

Introduction

Refugees and asylum seekers are people who have been forced to flee their country as a result of fear of serious harm, risk of violence, persecution or a threat to their lives. A refugee is a person who has been afforded the legal status of refugee while an asylum seeker is a person who is in the process of applying for refugee status. For the purpose of this article no differentiation is made between the two and the word refugee is used to imply both.

The issue of refugees has been at the forefront of our consciousness in in recent times, as a result of the massive influx of Syrian Refugees into Europe fleeing from the violence and destruction resulting from armed conflict in their country. The UNHCR has estimated that 9 million refugees have fled Syria since the outbreak of the unrest in March 2011 (European University Institute, 2015). The most current figures available from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are that as of mid-2014 the number of refugees worldwide was 13 million (UNHCR, 2015). This was before the recent escalation of the Syrian refugee numbers.

This article is theoretical in nature and considers how the combination of art therapy and mindfulness in work with refugees acknowledges human suffering and traumatic events while at the same time recognises the resilience that exists and the search for healing, health and growth. Examples are taken from a short term art therapy and mindfulness workshop described further on in this article.

Section snippets

Refugees and mental health

Refugee status is not synonymous with having a mental disorder, but many mental health professionals frame their work in the context of trauma and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because of the presenting needs and behaviours of many in the refugee community who can be distressed and anxious for the future. Whether individuals were politically active, or caught up in the conflict, political violence has devastating and destructive consequences at many different levels. Although some

Art therapy and trauma

There is much written on art therapy and trauma with a small minority of articles focusing on art therapy with refugees. Art therapy journals spanning 1985–2014 reveal a mix of approaches to trauma in general with the two most common including the creative expressive approach (expression of thoughts and feelings in a therapeutic relationship) (Appleton, 2001, Baker, 2006, Chilcotte, 2007, Chu, 2010, Leclerc, 2011, Pynoos and Eth, 1986; Schweitzer, Vromans, Ranke, & Griffin, 2014 to name some)

Mindfulness and trauma

Mindfulness as a way of being is key to Buddhist philosophy, but it is also a universal phenomenon pointing to the nature of the mind (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Mindfulness meditation practice involves the focus of one’s attention on the present moment towards building a conscious awareness of the body, sensations, feelings and thoughts (Gunarantana, 1992, Hanh, 1999). In an attempt to operationalize this all-inclusive idea, many have defined mindfulness meditation in more concrete terms. Kabat-Zinn

Context

Hong Kong is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture, but not the UN Refugee Convention. As of April 2014, Hong Kong had 47,000 asylum seekers registered in the city (Kao, 2014). Asylum seekers are not allowed to work or study and can wait for many years for their claims to be heard.

Participants

Participants in the Inhabited Studio were refugees and asylum seekers from seven different countries, predominantly Africa, but also two from Iran. Participants were clients of the only Non Government

Advancing the dialogue between art therapy and mindfulness

Through the experiential nature of both practices, the Inhabited Studio addressed the connection between the somatic experiences and visual/symbolic representations of trauma as well as recognising the experience of the individual as fitting into a context of wellbeing and suffering, rather than pathology. Following is a discussion of nine features present in the Inhabited Studio: safety, doing versus thinking, changing our relationship to our thoughts and feelings, the notion of time in the

Discussion

The eleven features defined by the overlap between art therapy and mindfulness in this context represent the realities of the suffering of the participants as well as the possibility of working towards enhancing coping and resilience.

The Inhabited Studio is a short term group approach for supporting resilience and not an in-depth treatment model for trauma. It was born out of the need to find a way to work with refugees who struggle to attend sustained groups, are suffering from the impact of

Conclusion

Both art therapy and mindfulness had the potential to help the participants to expand their repertoire of responses. An important aspect of this was the role already discussed that both art therapy and mindfulness played in helping the individual regulate the physiological responses which governed their days so that they were more open to new information and experiences and to divert their attention for a short period of time. The combination of art therapy and mindfulness helped participants

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    Present address: Alexander Yanai 6a, Herzlia, Israel.

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