Work at Art Helps Kids Find Mental Health

Angry and spiteful, 14-year-old Andy takes sculpturing clay to a corner by himself and hurls it to the ground, then pounds his fists into it. Over and over again, he picks the clay up to shape crude figures--only to obliterate them in outbursts of anger. After three such explosions, Andy finds himself slowly becoming absorbed in creating an ornate house out of the clay. Embellishing it with fine details, he proudly comes out of his corner and shares it with the other children.

“Without realizing it, Andy is using his clay to get in touch with deep, hostile feelings,” said Ellen Speert, president of the San Diego Art Therapy Assn., who uses drawing, sculpture and painting as tools to guide troubled children in healing their emotional wounds.

Speert began using this form of therapy a decade ago in Boston city schools, and for seven years has conducted art therapy sessions for adolescents in Chula Vista’s Southwood Psychiatric Center and other private clinics and schools.

In Andy’s case, Speert chose clay as the medium because of the boy’s extreme anger.

“He has a history of temper tantrums and fighting with other kids,” she said. “In a situation like this, clay is ideal. It allows the child to pound and punch all he wants without hurting himself or anyone else. At the same time, clay has a soothing quality, tending to calm a child while releasing tension.”

Sorting It Out

Andy is typical of the children she works with. He was placed in a residential treatment center by his father, who raised him alone after the mother left home five years ago. Amid signs of neglect and rejection, Andy clings to the hope that his father will someday come and take him home.

“But the dad never shows up for scheduled visits,” Speert said. “He sends money instead.”

Through art therapy, she is guiding Andy in unraveling reasons for his deep-rooted anger. In later sessions, the youngster admits that his elaborate house of clay is a deep, heartfelt cry for his father and for a real home.

“He still can’t deal with the rejection by his mother, but at least he is coming to terms with all those feelings bottled up inside himself,” she said.

Used on East Coast

Speert is one of about 30 art therapists in San Diego County who help rehabilitate youngsters labeled as misfits in school. Her clients often have police records and a history of drug abuse.

On the East Coast, art therapy has long been a standard component of school counseling departments, acute care hospitals and nursing homes. It’s not nearly as widespread here, but is a growing specialty tapped mostly by agencies and clinics that deal with troubled youngsters.

Speert, formerly an elementary school teacher in San Diego, came upon art therapy by coincidence.

While teaching during her postgraduate studies in Boston, Speert noticed that problem students responded well to her art instruction.

“Pretty soon other teachers sent me their problem kids for art class,” she said. That evolved into counseling fifth- and sixth-graders in the Boston City School District, where she used art to help bored advanced students, as well as troublemakers, solve their behavior problems.

Speert herself is an artist who weaves, quilts, paints and works with stained glass.

“You name it and I’ve probably dabbled in it,” she said.

Better Than Words

Gene Schiller, a licensed clinical social worker with the Douglas Young Clinic, a mental health clinic in Mira Mesa, also uses art therapy with children.

Each week he guides troubled youngsters while using paper, crayons and other art materials to unlock and examine their hostile feelings. Through their art, he attempts to accurately gauge a child’s emotional development, hand-eye coordination and ability to reason.

Like Speert, Schiller is an artist as well as a counselor, with a fine arts degree from San Diego State University.

“When I first began printmaking, I noticed a very special form of communication developing between myself and other artists who shared studio space as we talked, drew and created,” he said. “It became obvious to me that here was a format that could really work in my counseling. Up to that point I was using strictly verbal therapy.”

A big advantage, experts say, is that children respond much better to expression through art than through words. Until high school, youngsters prefer, and are usually better at, communicating with pictures and drawings.

“It also offers the ability to be a direct avenue for self-healing,” Speert added. “In verbal therapy the counselor is guiding the words. Even if we don’t want to do that, the way we ask questions and the way we listen really shapes what the person says. On the other hand, if we let the child draw and don’t interfere with that process, they have all the power.”

More Than Playtime

Initially there is reluctance, both with children and adults, to take part in art therapy because of performance anxiety.

“They think they’ll be judged as an artist,” Speert said. “But that’s quickly overcome. Children are especially easy to draw into the task. The art itself is pleasant and the creation of it can feel so good that it allows a person to explore deeply repressed, painful feelings. We’re offering a pleasurable experience to something that could otherwise be very uncomfortable.”

At the Douglas Young Clinic, Schiller opens a closet door to reveal shelves stuffed with toys, games and plenty of art materials.

“I’m kidded a lot by my colleagues when they see that,” he said. “But these are the tools of my trade. It may seem like playtime, and it is, but there’s a lot more going on than just that.”

Schiller, who works with children as young as 3 as well as people in their 90s, said each age group tends to stay within certain ranges of expression. Spotting deviations from the norm is one major way he and other art therapists can identify trouble areas.

In one session, an 8-year-old accidentally dropped his brush while painting a circle, causing ink blobs on his drawing. A 4-year-old watching from across the table copied the same action and turned in his own circle drawing complete with the same “accidental” blobs of paint.

“That’s OK, because preschool kids do a lot of role modeling and mimicking of older students,” Schiller said. “But they get away from that around 5 years old. If a child still heavily copies others, it indicates a problem area. Something is going on, and we need to explore why the child doesn’t have the inner resources to express himself.”

Spotting Trouble

Preschool youngsters enjoy doing lots of smearing in their art, Schiller said. Their figures are big, simple circles with tiny lines to indicate arms and legs. Once past kindergarten, children should rapidly advance to draw fairly well-proportioned human and animal figures.

“When 5- or 6-year-olds revert back to smearing and big, simple figures, there’s trouble,” Schiller said. “It usually means a trauma has occurred such as divorce, illness or death in the family. They regress to acting like 2- and 3-year-olds because that was the last time they felt they had complete control over a situation. Often they attempt to take over the role of the missing parent and feel completely responsible for a parent’s absence.”

Schiller also looks for distortions of the human figure, such as oversized genitals, which points to possible molestation or other sexual difficulties.

“We’re very careful in this area,” he stressed. “We don’t want to make an assumption of a problem when there is none. What comes to mind is a partially retarded child who drew a belly button. Someone interpreted that (in a genital sense) and it set off a whole series of child abuse investigations. That was totally needless because it turned out to be misinterpreted. And it caused tremendous difficulties.”

He also checks for the first seeds of depression, which can creep into the psyche even at the age of 6.

“I look for obvious things,” Schiller said, “such as images drawn in dark, somber colors and drawings that seem isolated. When a child draws a house that has a small door, tiny windows, a chimney with no smoke and no warmth, those are signs of a kid in trouble.”

Healthy children at 6 and 7 typically reflect their growing social awareness with drawings that have lots of people, animals and other objects in them.

“When I see children at this age draw themselves with no one else in the picture, or leave themselves entirely out of a drawing, that’s another indication of blocked development and frustration,” Schiller added.

Suicidal tendencies can also become apparent in the art of youngsters, some as young as 5.

“They are usually very direct and up front about it,” he said. “Some of the kids I work with actually draw a rope, a gun or a knife and write out the words, ‘I’m going to kill myself.’ Some will put it in a more active mode, such as showing a gun being shot, blood pouring from a wound or a knife going into a throat. I’ve found people of all ages tend to be direct and honest about suicide.”

Family Disintegration

Like most art therapists, Schiller is part of a team of social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists who work closely with parents and school officials to do everything possible to help the troubled child. By the time Schiller sees the children, they have a history of school problems, truancy, drug abuse or violence.

Most of these cases begin with family disintegration.

To reconstruct family dynamics and see what can be healed, one of the art therapist’s first tasks is to have the child draw his family and how he positions himself in it.

“If the child has the mother and father prominently in the drawing, with the kids on the periphery, or not even in the picture, I can get a real insight into how children are valued in that family,” Speert said.

At Southwood, Speert works with the child’s family and, in separate sessions, has them draw a mural of themselves.

A recent drawing had the mother in the kitchen, the father in the garage, and the kids scribbled all over the house. Both parents drew themselves as tiny stick figures.

“I really found out who was in control in that family, and it sure wasn’t the parents,” she said.

One of the goals at Southwood is to have the family grow in understanding the child’s problems and be able to successfully integrate them into family life after treatment.

To that end, Speert offers clay to family members and has them sculpt themselves and place the results on a display board. The position of each in relation to the others tells Speert and other Southwood counselors a lot about which family members are close, who trusts whom, and who is not trusted.

“Sometimes the family will place their images literally on top of each other,” she said. “When we discuss the results, I ask: ‘What does that mean? Are the figures so enmeshed with each other that they can’t pull apart and have separate lives?’ ”

Insights on Art

Speert and other art therapists are quick to point out that the act of creating art, no matter what its quality, is an inherently wonderful and fun activity for all youngsters and greatly enhances their overall learning experience and creativity.

Here are insights they offer on the art of healthy children:

- Youngsters should draw themselves somewhere in their pictures because healthy children see themselves as important. They often include family, pets and other things they value.

- Drawings should be understandable. All parts should fit together and make sense.

Objects in the drawings should have appropriate size relationships and fill most of the paper. But keep in mind that children under 7 draw things that are most important to them the largest.

- Pictures should usually include colors and not consistently feature sad or depressed themes. If images run off the edge of the paper, it may reflect a child’s perception of how he or she fits into the world.

If drawings continue to emphasize bizarre, violent themes and show evidence of lots of erasures or lines drawn so heavily that they tear the paper or so light that they hardly show, it may be appropriate to consult a family or school counselor.

For adults: If you want to experience the fun your children have with art, get fingerpaints and poster paper and, for your next party, have everyone participate in a group drawing.

“It’s guaranteed to instantly melt the ice and you won’t believe the fun you can have creating primitive art,” Schiller said.