“Part of the power of these programs is their ability to touch people on a visceral level and break down defenses that may resist traditional talk therapy,” says Iris Perlstein, LCADC, LPC, ATR-BC, Director of Allied Clinical Therapies at Princeton House. “You can move someone into a deep place very quickly using these therapies — a place where they can feel things and then translate them into words.”
Artistic Expression at Hamilton
For the past seven years, Princeton House’s outpatient site at Hamilton has celebrated National Creative Arts Therapies Week with a powerful exhibit of artwork created by patients. This year’s exhibit, which was displayed in the lobby of the building, featured about 50 works of art from patients in the children’s, adolescent, adult, and women’s trauma programs.
Christina Taylor, ATR-BC, LCAT, LPC, Senior Allied Clinical Therapist at the Hamilton site and coordinator of the exhibit, views the process as a labor of love and a source of pride to see clients, staff, and visitors engage with the imagery in a way that deepens awareness and connections of the universal human experience. It also brings to light what patients bravely come to resolve in treatment.
“The creative process is inherent to the human experience,” she says. “Art therapy is not about creating a masterpiece or a beautiful image; rather, it’s about the process of creating imagery in a safe environment that is contained by the relationship between the art therapist and the patient. It’s about safely expressing feelings that cannot always be put into words. The non-verbal, visual expression of self allows clients to appropriately self-regulate and release their affects safely, whether they are syntonic or dystonic in nature.”
Mindfulness Through the Camera Lens at Moorestown
Depressed and anxious adolescents may struggle with regulating their emotions. At Princeton House’s Moorestown site, therapist Myrna Ludwig, LCSW, is teaching mindfulness to teens through the use of photography not as an end product, but as a tool.
“Many of our patients internalize and blame themselves for their feelings, and develop poor coping skills, such as self-injury, suicidal behaviors, and substance use,” says Ludwig. “Photography brings the state of awareness to the present moment and subject matter, which can provide relief from distressful thoughts and begin the practice of tolerating distress.”
Teens in partial hospital and intensive outpatient treatment take photos using cell phones, a tool that most adolescents can access at all times. The process requires concentration, and therapists coach teens to take images in a non-judgmental way and to try to see their subject matter from a different perspective. Consciously focusing on reality as it is in the present moment exercises the muscles of mindfulness.
Pre- and post-testing results have consistently shown significantly lower levels of depression and anxiety and reduction of suicidal thoughts following the mindfulness photography group.
For more information about creative arts therapies at Princeton House, call 888.437.1610/outpatient or 800.242.2550/inpatient.
Article as seen in the Summer 2017 issue of Princeton House Behavioral Health.
