Building Resilience Through Group Art Therapy with Youth Exposed to Risk

• Main Author: Pantic, Lorraine Rose
• Format: Others
• Published: Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School 2012
• Subjects: Resilience; Group Art Therapy; Art Therapy; Marriage and Family Therapy and Counseling; Medicine and Health Sciences; Mental and Social Health
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/99; https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1083&context=etd

The research objective of this qualitative case study was to explore how art interventions could be useful to teach at-risk adolescents how to identify with and develop, personal strengths and resilient qualities. The subjects in this study were receiving treatment in an outpatient mental health clinic for a variety of diagnoses and participated in a ten-week resiliency building art- therapy group. During the weekly sessions participants followed a specific protocol including psycho-education, art therapy interventions and processing of the art products. The art interventions were based on the literature and designed to develop personal strengths, self- reliance, self-discovery and communication, problem solving, flexibility, compassion and empathy, future planning and teamwork. The results indicate that at-risk adolescents are able to identify, discuss and develop solutions to their challenges using the art interventions and psycho- education and that the group art-therapy modality provides a unique tool to accelerate positive outcomes and resilience in an outpatient mental health setting.