Pathology is the study and diagnosis of diseases, which can include physical and mental health conditions. In the realm of mental health, pathology has shed light on various psychic troubles such as depression, anxiety, and other chronic illnesses. These conditions can greatly impact an individual's overall well-being and daily life, causing significant distress and impairment.
Healing from psychic troubles involves addressing the root causes of these issues and finding ways to manage and overcome them. This can include therapy, meditation, self-care practices, and seeking support from loved ones. It is a journey that requires patience, self-reflection, and a willingness to confront difficult emotions. However, through this process, individuals can find inner peace and healing, leading to a better quality of life and a deeper understanding of themselves. It is important to prioritize mental health and seek help when needed in order to heal from psychic troubles and live a fulfilling life.
Depression, for instance, is a mood disorder characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and loss of interest in activities. Anxiety disorders, on the other hand, involve excessive worry and fear that can interfere with an individual's ability to function. Chronic illnesses, such as auto-immune disorders and neuro-degenerative diseases, can also have a profound impact on mental health. The study of pathology has helped to identify the underlying causes of these conditions and paved the way for effective treatments and interventions to improve the lives of those affected by them. Through continued research and understanding, we can continue to make strides in managing and addressing these psychic troubles and chronic illnesses.
These findings suggest that art therapy can not only be served as an useful therapeutic method to assist patients to open up and share their feelings, views, and experiences, but also as an auxiliary treatment for diagnosing diseases to help medical specialists obtain complementary information different from conventional tests.
The approach is a permanent invitation to explore the changes that can arise from the repetition of the same practice or denominator. It is not a question, then, of exercising an "intellectual" interest in order to increase knowledge, but rather of deploying a "phenomenological" curiosity, that is to say without any particular expectation other than to live each experience as fully and consciously as possible.
During therapy, art therapists can utilize many different art materials as mediums (i.e., visual art, painting, aromatherapy, music, yoga, couture, ceramic, colortherapy, feng shui, and healing massages...). Among them, music and paintings have been historically recognized as the most useful part of therapeutic processes within psychiatric and psychological specialties.
COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPIES
Let's take a quick detour to talk about a fairly general type of therapy that sometimes concerns art therapy: cognitive-behavioral therapies. This type of therapy has dialogue as its center, it constitutes above all an exchange. It is a brief therapy where the idea is always to transform a negative feeling into a positive feeling. No purely scientific study confirms this fact, but it seems that the psychological state of the patient and his confidence in his ability to heal play a large role in the process. The idea is that we develop negative responses, reactions and thoughts to reality. These patterns gradually become embedded in our habits. Certain negative thoughts that we may have about others or a particular situation come to us automatically.
This is the case, for example, of a person who has low self-esteem and who would constantly tend to devalue themselves. In our time, this is a fairly widespread situation which concerns most pathologies linked to art therapy. We talk about the patterns that are at work in depression, sleep disorders, trauma, anxiety disorders and even obsessive-compulsive disorders. For children, this will mainly concern disorders such as hyperactivity or school phobia.
However, cognitive-behavioral therapy intervenes briefly to treat these pathologies, unlike other treatments. The objective of this therapy will be to allow the patient to regain his autonomy and to improve the relationship he has with himself, an idea that we find in art therapy. Some symptoms can be curbed by removing obsessive ideas. The same goes for problems of valuation and images. The patient must be made aware of his potential, of what he is capable of doing and accomplishing.
It is a real struggle waged at the level of one's inner beliefs and automatic thoughts. Above all, we must understand that this negative pattern is at the origin of a certain psychological distress. At the center of such therapy, we therefore find the relationship between patient and therapist, with the idea of real collaboration.
The patient must be truly engaged in the process. Cognitive-behavioral therapy or CBT is used when drug treatments are no longer enough. It exists in many forms: we find it in the form of computer programs, books, or group therapies. It's a very structured therapy, where you just have to move forward step by step. This method is not always accepted within art therapy, as it only seems to focus on thought processes. But in reality, the cognitive process involves much more than thoughts: it concerns visual thinking, the ability to imagine or feel, all processes that we find in the artistic act.
The combined use of these two techniques provides access to new self-esteem for the patient, and allows them to realize more precisely the change they are experiencing. Motivation will also be a key element in achieving a result. It is also a principle that could be applied to all of existence. Now let's deal with the problems for which art therapy can be a remedy.
ADDICTION
We must clearly distinguish the phenomenon of dependence, which is a behavioral and cognitive phenomenon linked to a strong desire, from the phenomenon of addiction, which is damaging to mental and physical health. It is a pathology that affects everyone, at all ages. It is treated by different means, which may or may not be specific to the addiction in question: Psychotherapy - It is widely used to treat addiction, sometimes as the only treatment depending on the severity of the phenomenon. The idea is to provide real support to the patient, and to establish a dialogue which will allow them to understand the mechanisms they are experiencing. Recognizing that you suffer from addiction is a fundamental first step.
The phenomenon of addiction is one of the main pathologies for which art therapy can intervene effectively. Above all, today, it is a common phenomenon: who can boast of not being "addicted" to something? To screens, to coffee, to our dear and tender cigarette or to gambling. Of course, we do not necessarily reach this stage, but the repeated consumption of an addictive substance, coupled with a harmful environment, often seems to plunge us into a phenomenon of dependence. And addiction is the culmination of this phenomenon of dependence. What exactly is addiction? It is a desire that cannot be rejected, repeated and irrepressible. The subject may do his best to try to motivate himself, but he can hardly turn away from this desire. It classifies alcoholism, the consumption of different drugs, smoking, medications, or even behavioural addictions such as gaming or the use of social networks. These behaviors or substances will generate psychoactive substances.
Cognitive-behavioral therapies are very effective in reducing stress phenomena and in dealing with obstacles that arise despite the desire to change. Here, art therapy can be useful in the context of group therapy, but also in the case of a milder addiction or a simple dependence phenomenon, in an individual session. It's even a therapy that you can apply at home to combat small daily addictions. And this, above all, because art therapy helps to stop certain mechanisms of addiction, it allows the patient to understand themselves and regain a certain self-confidence. The driving force behind addiction is above all the search for pleasure: we have the impression that the activity gratifies us, makes us feel, makes us happy, and this pushes our motivation to consume, sometimes to the detriment of all.
PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress and Disorders
Let's now work on a second very common disorder: stress post-traumatic stress and disorders generally associated with trauma.This condition causes many symptoms, and its origin can be multiple. The subject concerned has always been linked to a traumatic event: cataclysm, rape, road accident, attack…
He may have experienced it directly, been exposed to it repeatedly, or still having simply witnessed it, but still feeling thepsychological consequences. “Psychotrauma” in general is the state we are in when a traumatic event happens. It’s a natural reaction that is often even necessary.
We speak of post-traumatic stress disorder when these symptoms persist over time. Symptoms may also appear later, often between 1 to 3 months after the event, sometimes even after several years, and concern patients of all ages.The dominant feelings of this state are fear, a feeling of helplessness in the face of life events. The patient will experience relivings, in the form of memories spontaneous, nightmares, flashbacks. Sometimes he will want at all costs to avoid reproducing the conditions that led him to this event, and even seeing people who recall the incident: this is the phenomenon of avoidance.
This state of stress will cause disabling cognitive and emotional alterations, such as often blaming yourself, having negative beliefs, detaching yourself from others, to prevent themselves from being happy. Post-traumatic stress also involves hyperactivation of the nervous system, which can lead to behaviors as well angry, as well as hyper-vigilant behavior. It often causes disorders of thesleep and concentration.
It is commonly said that after a months, we move from a state of acute crisis, which is a transitional phase of disarray following the event, to a state of post-traumatic stress. If it lasts more than six month, we are talking about post-traumatic stress chronic.The majority of affected subjects recover in three months. Those who develop a PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)following a traumatic event are, in many cases, associated with another pathology: depression, addiction, orstill anxiety disorders.