Using Art Therapy to Treat Eating Disorders
Storyboard Text
- “Working together we kind of saw a little more of each other’s opinions and creativity and got a better feel for each other.”
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- “The one picture says so much you know”
- Unsurprisingly, in 2017 yet another research team (Thaler et al.) decided to study this type of group art therapy, and even thought to include museum visits! Again, they collected some great responses from the project.
- “I love the opportunity to let out my emotions, state of being, in another way than speech or writing.”
- “We can think of other things during that time. Our brain frees itself.”
- (Griffin et al., 2021)
- There were some common themes between the studies that really spoke to the potential art therapy has as an eating disorder treatment:
- Bettering self awareness and expression
- Getting a break or distraction from obsessive thoughts
- Finding pride in oneself
- Discovering new perspectives
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- However, all research comes with its weaknesses, which lied specifically in the quantitative results of these studies. Each of the teams' methods could have been reported with greater detail, and their samples make it difficult to generalize the results to all people with eating disorders.
- But despite the downsides, we can't discard the valuable words from those participants. Their personal experiences show us that art can help people identify and face emotions tied to their eating disorder, find new things to take pride in other than eating habits, lift their self esteem, and find a healthy escape from overwhelming thoughts (Griffin et al., 2021).Non-verbal self expression needs to be more present in research psychology so we can incorporate alternative and beneficial therapies into common ED treatment, and give those struggling the relief they deserve.
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