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Colour A Kid’s World, And Help Him Heal Through Art

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10 April 2018
The Straits Times
Media Coverage

Children take to art naturally. Combine this with the fact that the medium lends itself well to numerous avenues of self-expression, and Singapore is witnessing the field of art therapy gaining popularity. As Ho Soo Fung, an alumna of LASALLE’s MA Art Therapy programme who is presently a principal occupational therapist at the Institute of Mental Health noted, art therapy is a safe outlet for a child to communicate difficult feelings without actually having to verbally discuss it.

With a significant body of research to demonstrate that art therapy is able assist young individuals to deal with challenging life situations, such as emotional trauma, self-doubt, death, parental conflict, and terminal illness, more hospitals are beginning to offer it. The Art Therapists’ Association of Singapore has also concurrently witnessed a growth in their membership numbers – from 30 in 2013, to 45 in 2017 –and a large contributing factor to this is that more trained professionals are graduating from LASALLE’s MA Arts Therapy programme.

Dian Handayani is one such example. She is currently an art therapist at the Singapore General Hospital’s psychiatry department, where she assists patients in their recovery journey. Another alumna that discussed with The Straits Times at length about misconceptions about art therapy was Annelaure Vuillermoz. She recounted a session where a young boy drew a gruesome painting of a man stabbing the eyes of another. Psychologists in the 1950s will often be quick to diagnose that the patient has violent tendencies but upon careful probing, the boy shared that the piece was inspired by a zombie film he had recently watched. Ms Vuillermoz observed, “When he was watching the movie, he felt a lot of fear and the next day, it was an opportunity for him to feel the fear [again] and to tell me what he was fearful about.”

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