Creative health
Art Therapy Helps Unlock Inner Ills
The PS 307 quilt. |
By Jennifer Polland
In the days following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, children across New York City experienced earth-shattering losses. Some children lost parents, others lost family members and friends, while others grieved for the state of their city.
PS 307, an elementary school in Brooklyn, undertook a school-wide therapeutic art project to help its students grieve. The students received square pieces of cloth and were told to draw themselves in their community. When they finished, the squares were sewn together to create a vibrant quilt.
The creation of this quilt was a form of art therapy. Emerging as a distinct profession in the 1940s, the practice of art therapy is based on the belief that the creative process helps people resolve conflicts, develop social skills, manage behavior, reduce stress, increase self-esteem and self-awareness, and achieve insight.
The American Art Therapy Association, a national non-profit association for art therapists, defines art therapy as “an established mental health profession that uses the creative process of art making to improve and enhance the physical, mental and emotional well-being of individuals of all ages.”
“Art therapy is a kind of holistic psychotherapy that involves art expression,” said Diana Milia, a certified art therapist who teaches art therapy at New York University. “We use art and the artistic process as a way to access feelings and make personal changes.”
Milia has practiced art therapy with children and adults in educational and clinical settings throughout New York City. She has a private practice in Brooklyn and is an art therapy consultant at Queens Children’s Psychiatric Center.
“At Queens Children’s Psychiatric Center, not all kids respond well to verbal therapy,” Milia said. “Art therapy is a wonderful alternative to verbal therapy because many children don’t have the vocabulary to talk about their feelings, but they do think in pictures and symbols.”
Although Milia specializes in working with children and adolescents, art therapy is used to treat everyone from young children to the elderly. Art therapy treats a variety of mental and physical disorders, such as anxiety, depression, mental illness, substance abuse, domestic abuse, body image disorders, family issues, trauma, neurological problems, and an array of mental and emotional problems.
“The goal of art therapy is not necessarily to make an artistic masterpiece,” Milia said. “The goal is to work on specific goals having to do with the patient’s personalities and psychological needs.”
When Milia treats a child who comes from a background of disruptions, like divorce or foster care, she has them create a hand-sewn doll. Using a soft-textured material for the body, children stuff, decorate, and care for the doll. This doll, Milia said, “becomes a metaphor for self-care.”
Art therapy is used in a broad range of settings, such as hospitals and clinics (both psychiatric and medical), out-patient mental health facilities, domestic violence and homeless shelters, schools, correctional facilities, senior centers, art studios, and private practices.
In Queens, many hospitals, medical facilities and community centers use art therapy to treat patients. Creedmoor Psychiatric Center has a program called the Living Museum, a museum dedicated to the production and collection of art by mentally ill adults. Samaritan Village, a rehabilitation center for substance abuse, also has a program that encourages its patients to create artwork. Other Queens institutions that heed art as a healing force are North Shore Long Island Jewish, Elmhurst Hospital Center, and Pride of Judea Mental Health Center.
Each facility uses art therapy differently depending on its population, but throughout Queens, art therapists use artwork to encourage patients to meet their personal goals.
“Art therapists are very careful not to analyze clients’ work for them,” Milia said. “We try to have the client analyze their own work because they are the only ones who know what the piece is about. We really use art to encourage the client to begin to understand their problems.”
Although not everyone responds to art therapy, most people are stimulated by this type of creative therapy. For Milia, a career in art therapy has given her the opportunity to observe the healing powers of art.
“I think art therapy is endlessly fascinating,” Milia said. “It’s very inspiring to see people change and grow through art. There’s just so much potential in people and in their creativity, and it’s wonderful to see people come to appreciate themselves in a whole body capacity because of art.”
Healing Tones
Queens Sites Use Music For Therapy
A child at theNordoff-Robbins Center. |
By Jennifer Polland
Although the idea of music as a healing influence can be traced back thousands of years to Aristotle and Plato, the modern practice of music therapy only began in the United States in 1944 at Michigan State University. Today, music therapy is a commonly practiced form of psychotherapy that is used throughout the United States.
The American Music Therapy Association, founded in 1998, defines music therapy as “an established healthcare profession that uses music to address physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals of all ages.” Music therapy can be used to treat both adults and children for any number of disabilities or illnesses, like autism, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, and mental or physical illness. Music therapy is used to promote wellness, to manage stress, to alleviate pain, to express feelings, to enhance memory, to improve communication and to promote physical rehabilitation.
Music therapists conduct therapy sessions—either individual or group sessions— in psychiatric or medical hospitals, outpatient clinics, community mental health centers, drug and alcohol programs, nursing homes, hospice programs, correctional facilities, halfway houses, schools, and private practices. It is impossible to define a typical music therapy session because each session varies so greatly depending on its participants and setting.
Music therapy is used throughout Queens in all sorts of facilities, from schools to hospitals to senior centers. Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens Village has a music therapy program as does many Queens senior centers, like Catholic Charities’ Alzheimer’s Adult Day Care Program in Flushing.
At New York University’s Nordoff-Robbins Center, a center devoted to the practice and teaching of music therapy, each therapy session is videotaped. A series of videotaped sessions show the progression of a 5-year-old who is neurologically impaired, blind and spastic. Nothing has reached this child before—she is emotionally, physically and mentally inaccessible. Over the course of her first year in music therapy, she cries and squirms at any musical sound. But two years later, she is laughing, playing notes on a piano, and making an effort to walk and talk—two things her parents were told she would never do.
The Nordoff-Robbins Center at NYU is more than just a facility; it has become a widespread approach to practicing music therapy. Defined by Dr. Paul Nordoff and Dr. Clive Robbins, the approach is based on the belief that there is an “inborn musicality residing in every human being that can be activated in the service of personal growth and development.” For the 5-year-old who seemed to be unreachable, music became a form of communication.
Michele Ritholz has been practicing music therapy for over 25 years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and music from Queens College and a master’s degree in music therapy from NYU. Ritholz, who is also the training coordinator at the Nordoff-Robbins Center, explained that each facility takes a different approach to practicing music therapy, but at NYU, the focus is placed primarily on music.
“There are different approaches in the field, and our approach is more music centered,” Ritholz said. “Here, we work with active music-making, meaning that we make music with our clients at whatever level they can. If a child can even just play a single tone on a bell, we relate to that and use that to build on their strengths.”
While Nordoff-Robbins takes a musically softer approach, other facilities may concentrate more heavily on the psychological or medical aspect of the therapy. In hospitals, for example, music therapy might be used to alleviate pain, to elevate patients’ moods, or to promote movement for physical therapy, according to the AMTA. In nursing homes, music might be used to increase the level of physical, social and mental functioning of elderly people while in schools music could be used as a tool to strengthen communication and coordination skills.
“Music therapy is exciting and surprising,” Ritholz said. “Music is an amazing art form that has so many varied elements of mood and emotions that it really can touch all people. We’ve learned to use the power of music to reach out to people who can sometimes be very difficult to reach. That’s really satisfying to me as a human being.”
CRACKING UP
Chiropractic Care Not Just For Backs
By Jennifer Polland
You know those recurring headache you have endured for years? How about those stiff shoulders or the throbbing pain in your lower back? It might take more than aspirin to fix those problems. It could be time to visit a chiropractor.
Any number of aches and pains can be caused by spinal misalignment, a condition that is treated by a doctor of chiropractic, or a chiropractor. The Council on Chiropractic Education, an agency that is responsible for accrediting programs offering chiropractic degrees, defines a doctor of chiropractic as “a primary care physician whose purpose… is to help meet the health needs of individual patients and the public, giving particular attention to the structural and neurological aspects of the body.”
“We work on all sorts of conditions related to the spine,” said Dr. Jared Mandel, a chiropractor who practices in Bayside. “We treat subluxation, which is a condition in which the spinal bones move out of their normal positions. When the spine loses its motion, it becomes inflamed and can lead to a lot of problems, including neurological problems.”
Mandel, 30, has only been practicing chiropractic care for five years—he graduated from New York Chiropractic College in 2001 as a doctor of chiropractic—but has already treated people with countless spine-related problems. He said that everyday he treats people with neck pain, back pain, shoulder pain, sciatica, scoliosis, TMJ (grinding of the teeth), headaches and more.
“Queens is a very diverse population, and as a result, I treat a lot of different conditions,” Mandel said. “Everyone is unique and different and everyone who comes into my office has a different problem. I get everyone from Verizon employees who come in with back pain because they’re climbing poles all day to businessmen who come in with neck pain and stiffness because they stare at a computer screen all day long.”
Most people only seek out chiropractic treatment when they experience back or neck pain, but Mandel said that everyone—from infants to the elderly—should seek a chiropractic consultation to ensure the correct alignment of their spines.
“Sometimes a spine could be out of alignment for years, but the person will never be aware of it because they don’t feel pain,” Mandel said. “It’s good for the general population to get their spine assessed because people may not feel it now, but later, spinal misalignment could lead to a lot of problems. The earlier it gets assessed, the less severe the problems will be.”
Chiropractors use a variety of remedies to treat spinal problems. Traditionally, chiropractors adjust the spinal column manually, but today, they might use water, light, massage, ultrasounds, electrotherapy, acupuncture and heat therapy. Chiropractors do not prescribe drugs or perform surgery.
Chiropractic care takes a holistic approach to healthcare, stressing the patient’s overall health and wellness. Recognizing that many factors affect health, including exercise, diet, rest, environment and heredity, chiropractors not only treat patients with natural treatments, they also recommend lifestyle changes.
“When a patient comes into a chiropractic office, it could mean a lifestyle change for them,” Mandel said. “When we assess patients, we don’t just look at the one condition that they came in for; we look at the person as a whole. We might recommend changes in diet, exercise, sleeping habits or working habits.”
Each chiropractic session varies depending on the patient’s condition, but Mandel said that he generally spends about 20 to 30 minutes with each patient, treating his or her specific condition. A manual spine adjustment could take a mere five minutes, while an ultrasound or electrotherapy could take longer. Mandel said that he also spends a large portion of his sessions teaching patients how to take care of themselves.
“In chiropractic care, we try to empower the patients to correct what’s causing their problems,” Mandel said. “Whether it’s sitting up at their desk or straightening out rounded shoulders, it can make a world of difference.”
To find a chiropractor in Queens, visit the New York State Chiropractic Association Web site at www.nysca.com or call your insurance company to find out which chiropractors are accepted in your plan. For more information about Mandel Chiropractic & Wellness Center in Bayside, visit www.mandelchiropractic.com or call (718) 631-9390.
