Can the art be therapeutic? Reflections starting from the work developed with patients of the "third age" in the atelier of the life of the Institute of Psychiatry of UFRJ - IPUB

Abstract

The work with the artistic expression in the atelier of visual arts integrates the workshops of art of the Institute of Psychiatry of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - IPUB, Atelier of the Life and it is part of the multidisciplinary therapeutic project developed in the psychogeriatrics section, which is intimately committed with the transformations in the psychiatric attendance. The art workshops have been accomplishing therapeutic and fundamental paper in the improvement of the life quality for people with more than sixty years old. Besides providing the artistic activity, they are also coexistence spaces favouring the amplification of the circle of relationships, reducing the action of the solitude and of the social isolation that frequently accompany the aging. The age as biological destiny is a reality that can become dramatic in consequence of the discrimination due to psychological and social factors. Several psychic difficulties can become worse in that phase because the unconscious fear of the death increases and pathological psychic organisations can show through depressive, paranoid or maniacs reactions. The artistic activity developed with those patients in the atelier aids them in the ransom of your autonomy and self-esteem. We have noticed, in that experience, that the patients in the advanced age can assimilate new representations in your psychic life, trying a new sense of identity and reattaching the contact with internal sources of vitality through the relationship with the creative activity. This way, the art is an attempt of each one to give sense to your internal experiences that identify them as human being.