[LAUIL601] Secondary Research: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Art Therapy by Dr. Amy Backos

NOTES FROM BOOK

Backos, A (2021) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Art Therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley

Publishers

Chapter 1 – PTSD, acute stress and context

WHO has defined PTSD using five key symptoms; ‘hyperarousal including startle reactions,

intrusive thoughts, memories or dreams about the traumatic event, feelings of

numbness…and detachment, anhedonia/lack of pleasure and avoidance and fear of people,

places and situations which are reminders of the trauma’ (WHO, 2019 cited in Backos, 2021,

pg40)

Chapter 2 – stages of therapy to treat PTSD

- Pg 61

Trauma-focused art

They look at details of client’s traumatic experience – sights, sounds, smells, bodily

sensations

- Pg 62

Maslow’s psychological needs pyramid

Esteem is divided into aesthetic and cognitive needs

Aesthetic needs include seeking out beauty and taking time to appreciate it

A lifeline art intervention – clients create a timeline during art therapy of their

significant life events which helps them reflect on how past experiences are only

part of their past experience, not all of who they are

- Art therapies such as doll making (pg 65) and mask making (Ted Talk) seem more

relevant to people with sight and people who can perceive the world with two fully

working eyes.

Chapter 3 – art therapy to address PTSD and acute stress

- ‘Art therapists have long understood that artmaking provides a means of knowing

oneself, processing upsetting experiences and consolidating memories, feelings, and

sensations into meaningful narratives’ (Backos, 2021, pg 71)

- Traumatic memories become fragmented and art therapy offers a non-verbal way of

offering a resolution – clients do not have to talk about it, they can make in response

to what has happened

- There are a wide range of art therapy approaches to trauma developed by

practitioners working in the field

Visual dialogue – looking at the relationship between symbols in art and

psychological diagnosis, Spring discovered more reoccurring forms of disembodied

eyes and wedge shapes in the group who had experienced sexual trauma as opposed

to the controlled group that weren’t (pg84)

Chapter 6 – avoidance

- People with trauma tend to avoid people, places and other reminders of what

caused their pain, but this only means they make less progress.

‘However, we cannot conceptualize a client’s symptom of avoidance as resistance to

therapy’ (Backos, 2021, pg155). Not a personal or moral failing.

- A picture is worth a thousand words (pg 156)

- In a case study from Backos’s book, an art therapy client was told by her art therapist

to draw a bridge which is a form of visualising themselves, it is individual where they

place themselves on the bridge, at the beginning, end or even hanging off it. It is

individual to the client how they present themselves. This shows how art therapy

does not put pressure on you to express your thoughts and feelings and provides a

safe space to describe how you are feeling which says more than you ever could

through words. (pg 157)

- ‘The first stage of grieving is denial, and this holds true when someone learns about

a significant health diagnosis’ (Backos, 2021, pg 159)