Month: May 2009

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Online Games to Boost Self-Esteem

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Researchers at McGill University have created several online activities called Self Esteem Games, helping people build self confidence and stay on the positive side of life. The games force you to recognize happy faces and/or your own name, creating a positive association to yourself and others in your mind. In other words, the exercises foster an individual’s ability to recognize and focus on positive environmental stimuli (i.e., smiling people) rather than the negative, allowing the players to practice having a positive or more optimistic attentional bias.

The games are easy, fun, fast and somewhat meditative…something that would be appropriate for pretty much anyone to do on their own, or perhaps at the beginning or end of a therapy session…or even as homework after a therapy session is over. Homework that’s fun? Well, that IS something to be excited about!

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Art Therapy Around the World

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This is a new post that will periodically appear on my blog to sum up some of the art therapy studios, events and exhibitions currently happening around the world. My hope is to inspire and remind us all how large the art therapy network really is, and all the wonderful things we’re all doing to help others and spread the word about art therapy as a profession.

Barbara Watson, an Australian art therapist discusses her work with individuals suffering from chronic mental illness at the Reflections Art Studio in Northbridge.

In Sacramento California, the Shriners Hospital teams up with the Sacramento Fine Arts Center to create their first art therapy show: “ArtSpress Yourself: A Celebration of Children’s Achievements through Art”. The show runs from Tuesday 05/19/09-Saturday 06/06/09. Click here to see the article in the Sacramento Bee.

In Fredericksburg Virginia, an exhibit of artwork and poetry created by sexual assault survivors is being hosted at the at the Fredericksburg Athenaeum until the end of may. Click here for further information.

An article by WFIE in Indiana featuring the benefit of art therapy in the treatment of those suffering from cancer.

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The Tate teams up with Art Therapy in London

The Tate Museum and art therapists from Oxleas NHS Trust in south-east London are teaming together, linking those who suffer from mental illness and their families to the artwork found in the museum itself. The idea is to allow new, spontaneous interpretations of the museum’s artwork to emerge in order to begin a dialogue about mental illness and the inner world of those who have been touched by it.

The article written by Nina Lakhani for the Independent can be viewed here.

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TTAP Method- Artx and Alzheimer’s

Dr. Linda Levine Madori, Recreation Therapist and ATR-BC, is currently in Finland teaching the TTAP method (Therapeutic Thematic Arts Programming for Older Adults) in several Universities throughout the county. She is blogging about her experiences, and was recently interviewed for the Creative Therapy Sessions podcast with Melissa Solorzano, available through Melissa’s website and on Itunes. Dr. Levine Madori is also the author of a new book, Therapeutic Thematic Arts Programming for Older Adults.

Here’s a youtube video where Dr. Levine Madori breifly talks about Alzheimers, the brain and the TTAP method: