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Art's Healing Power
Excerpt from an article by Marian Scott in The Montreal Gazette,
February 1, 2009.
A brush painting hangs over Lorraine Palardy's desk: a scarlet squiggle on a white background.
It's titled The Abandoned Ribbon.
For Palardy, the award-winning founding director of the art therapy program Les Impatients, the painting sums up the plight of people with mental illness: cast by the wayside, lost, their brightness trampled underfoot.
Les Impatients has grown into a renowned organization offering art, music therapy and drama workshops to 250 participants in three Montreal locations.
All of the participants have some form of psychiatric disorder, from burnout to chronic mental illness and intellectual handicaps.
"Mental illness is a huge loss," she said. "We see people who have lost their job, their home, their spouse, their family. Here, they rebuild their confidence, their self-esteem."
Art therapy has grown dramatically since the 1970s, said Frances Kaplan, associate professor at Marylhurst University in Portland, Ore.
In the early days, therapists believed that by expressing deep-seated feelings through art, participants could work through personal problems. Nowadays, however, there is consensus that genetics plays a greater role in chronic mental illness than was previously thought, she said.
While there is much anecdotal evidence that some people suffering from mental illness are artistically inclined, science still has not proven a link between mental illness and creativity, she said.