Art Therapy

To heal without medication is possible, and even preferred by many. Individuals who have the gift of a visionary, and the heart of compassion have been driven toward a group of people—particularly soldiers diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)—with a deep desire to improve their lives. They possess the need to make a change in this world: rather it is for a loved one, a patient, or even a soldier once themselves. Educating and bringing awareness to the public and the health care system of these illnesses and an effective treatment such as, art therapy without medication is a huge undertaking, but an important one. Health care industries have argued that not enough evidence has been provided for them to understand how to label
B. Hoffman explains in her article "The Role of Expressive Therapies in Therapeutic Interactions; Art Therapy-Explanation of the Concept" defining art therapy with its techniques and the effectiveness on healthy people as well as patients (200). Healthy people can turn ill and when it involves the brain it gets tricky to treat. Patients such as those told they have PTSD have benefited from art therapy. Art therapy is not a new program. She explains how along with the creation of psychiatry in the 1800’s, art was implemented as a way to distinguish between the disorders of a sick person and to discover talents of high aesthetic value (200). The illness PTSD is not a new illness, it is just starting to be understood –along with art therapy having been around for hundreds of years –a new understanding of this illness and treatment is just now starting to surface. Three very important pieces—where Katie Collie et.al and Jeremy Ramirez shed a light on the troubled individual with PTSD from different traumas, and Hoffman demonstrate the positives of art therapy on healthy individuals—particularly the promotion of art and how it helps with the development of a child—give praise to the therapy which utilizes art to enhance life in both the healthy and the sick. The usefulness of art therapy in youth is an added benefit, but she also emphasizes on the positives of nonpharmacological interventions in a patient’s life. To treat without medicine in the military is hard because Ibprophen is the doctor’s best friend. Doctors should be educated with these nonpharmacological programs so they are not so medicine happy, but more opt to send them to a therapy that has been around for a long time. Hoffman goes way back to the time of the 1800’s and discusses a number of individuals who advanced art therapy, the benefit it provided for different groups of people, along with the