Art Therapy: Drawing From Experience

EVEN WHEN children can’t verbalize the effect that violence has on them, they sometimes express it by drawing pictures full of blood, guns and knives, says Dr. Spencer Eth, acting chief of psychiatry of the West Los Angeles Veteran’s Administration Medical Center and medical director of a trauma unit associated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Eth worked with the crisis team that responded to the shooting at the 49th Street Elementary School. He says that when children too traumatized to talk are told, “Just draw about anything you want,” their pictures reveal much about what’s on their minds. This enables therapists to ask children to tell a story, which usually has some connection with the trauma they have suffered.

For example, after a boy threatened to jump off the roof at an elementary school as his horrified classmates watched, children spontaneously made drawings that depicted the incident and the hospital where they imagined the boy was taken.

Says Eth: “Drawing is one of the most effective techniques we have for getting a child to open up and confront difficult feelings--the first step in healing.”