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Hospital art therapy program helps children express themselves
Nathan Allen loves the colour blue.
His T-shirt is blue, the blanket wrapped around his knees is blue, and his eyes, bright under his baseball cap, are blue.
But blue is also a feeling, and after spending months undergoing near-daily dialysis at the Hospital for Sick Children, who could blame an 11-year-old for feeling a bit down?
Nathan was referred to the hospital’s new on-staff art therapist to help him cope with his emotions. And when Jennifer Bassin came to visit recently week with her case of supplies, he chose the colour blue to start on a sculpture of a car.
“Shocking,” jokes his mom, Judy Chapman.
Nathan was diagnosed with a bilateral Wilms’ tumour, a rare cancer of the kidneys mostly affecting children, at age 5. He started chemo and radiation and had a partial nephrectomy in both kidneys. His left kidney never worked properly again, and after almost five years of remission, cancer returned to his right kidney.
Now he undergoes chemo once every three weeks and dialysis five days a week. That’s a lot of poking and prodding for an 11-year-old who would prefer to be playing defence on the Georgina Blaze novice hockey team and cuddling his 3-year-old beagle, Daisy, at home in Keswick, Ont.
After three more chemo treatments, Nathan can go home. His parents are training to do at-home dialysis and counting down the days until Nathan can receive a new kidney. His mom is praying she can eventually donate one of her own.
Until then, he looks forward to his weekly sessions with Bassin. She visits during the two-and-a-half-hour dialysis process, and they paint or sculpt while the machine whirs in the background.
“It absorbs some of the time,” Nathan says. “I like to build stuff.”
Bassin has brought something called a 3Doodler — a cross between a hot glue gun and a tiny 3D printer, which can make plastic sculptures. This day, after he makes the car, she asks Nathan to make something that resembles his idea of cancer.
“A big, black, blob,” he says.
Nathan is an outpatient but most of Bassin’s patients are long-term in-patients at Sick Kids who have chronic illnesses, complex medical histories or have faced traumatic injuries.
Since the program started in May, she does art therapy just two days a week and sees between four and eight children aged 4 to 18. Psychiatric patients have benefited from art therapy at Sick Kids in the past, but this is the first year the new program, which is entirely funded by donations, has been extended to medical patients.
“Art therapy is taking the language children already speak and meeting them at that level,” Bassin said. “You don’t have to be good at art to participate in art therapy. It doesn’t have to be about the painting or about the drawing. It’s more about finding something they enjoy that we can use as a tool to explore how they’re feeling.”
One patient, who had recently been in a traumatic boat accident, sculpted a vessel out of clay — and then smashed it against the wall in a moment of catharsis. Some enjoy the physicality of painting big murals, and some like to rip up what they’ve drawn. Another drew a landscape so she could imagine herself outside the hospital, at a picnic.
“When you create something outside of you, you can really treat it like it’s at a distance, and it makes it safer for us to explore a little bit.”
Making art helps young patients take back some control in their lives, if only for an hour. Some patients are content with their creation, and others want to delve deeper into their feelings, Bassin says.
Nathan’s family hopes he can go home in late September, when he can rejoin his classmates in Grade 6 and go back to being an annoying older brother to his sister Emma, 7. He’s still quiet, but less withdrawn after a session, his mom says.
As he paints a mask green, with blue lips and black eyes, Bassin asks Nathan if he has a plan.
“Nope,” he says. “Just going step by step.”
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Drug addiction is complex
We’re told studies have proven that drugs like heroin and cocaine instantly hook a user. But it isn’t that simple – little-known experiments over 30 years ago tell a very different tale.
Drugs are scary. The words “heroin” and “cocaine” make people flinch. It’s not just the associations with crime and harmful health effects, but also the notion that these substances can undermine the identities of those who take them. One try, we’re told, is enough to get us hooked. This, it would seem, is confirmed by animal experiments.
Many studies have shown rats and monkeys will neglect food and drink in favour of pressing levers to obtain morphine (the lab form of heroin). With the right experimental set up, some rats will self-administer drugs until they die. At first glance it looks like a simple case of the laboratory animals losing control of their actions to the drugs they need. It’s easy to see in this a frightening scientific fable about the power of these drugs to rob us of our free will.
But there is more to the real scientific story, even if it isn’t widely talked about. The results of a set of little-known experiments carried out more than 30 years ago paint a very different picture, and illustrate how easy it is for neuroscience to be twisted to pander to popular anxieties. The vital missing evidence is a series of studies carried out in the late 1970s in what has become known as “Rat Park”. Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander, at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, suspected that the preference of rats to morphine over water in previous experiments might be affected by their housing conditions.
To test his hypothesis he built an enclosure measuring 95 square feet (8.8 square metres) for a colony of rats of both sexes. Not only was this around 200 times the area of standard rodent cages, but Rat Park had decorated walls, running wheels and nesting areas. Inhabitants had access to a plentiful supply of food, perhaps most importantly the rats lived in it together.
Rats are smart, social creatures. Living in a small cage on their own is a form of sensory deprivation. Rat Park was what neuroscientists would call an enriched environment, or – if you prefer to look at it this way – a non-deprived one. In Alexander’s tests, rats reared in cages drank as much as 20 times more morphine than those brought up in Rat Park.
Inhabitants of Rat Park could be induced to drink more of the morphine if it was mixed with sugar, but a control experiment suggested that this was because they liked the sugar, rather than because the sugar allowed them to ignore the bitter taste of the morphine long enough to get addicted. When naloxone, which blocks the effects of morphine, was added to the morphine-sugar mix, the rats’ consumption didn’t drop. In fact, their consumption increased, suggesting they were actively trying to avoid the effects of morphine, but would put up with it in order to get sugar.
‘Woefully incomplete’
The results are catastrophic for the simplistic idea that one use of a drug inevitably hooks the user by rewiring their brain. When Alexander’s rats were given something better to do than sit in a bare cage they turned their noses up at morphine because they preferred playing with their friends and exploring their surroundings to getting high.
Further support for his emphasis on living conditions came from another set of tests his team carried out in which rats brought up in ordinary cages were forced to consume morphine for 57 days in a row. If anything should create the conditions for chemical rewiring of their brains, this should be it. But once these rats were moved to Rat Park they chose water over morphine when given the choice, although they did exhibit some minor withdrawal symptoms.
You can read more about Rat Park in the original scientific report. A good summary is in this comic by Stuart McMillen. The results aren’t widely cited in the scientific literature, and the studies were discontinued after a few years because they couldn’t attract funding. There have been criticisms of the study’s design and the few attempts that have been made to replicate the results have been mixed.
Nonetheless the research does demonstrate that the standard “exposure model” of addiction is woefully incomplete. It takes far more than the simple experience of a drug – even drugs as powerful as cocaine and heroin – to make you an addict. The alternatives you have to drug use, which will be influenced by your social and physical environment, play important roles as well as the brute pleasure delivered via the chemical assault on your reward circuits
It suggests that even addictions can be thought of using the same theories we use to think about other choices, there isn’t a special exception for drug-related choices. Rat Park also suggests that when stories about the effects of drugs on the brain are promoted to the neglect of the discussion of the personal and social contexts of addiction, science is servicing our collective anxieties rather than informing us
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the real miracle
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” Thich Nhat Hanh
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sitting
We sit, with our breath.
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What is Mindfulness ?
Mindfulness is a concentrated state of awareness that can help us see and respond to situations with clarity and without getting carried away by emotions or the constant chatter in our heads. Mindfulness enables us to:
· Better manage tension and stress
· Enhance objectivity, mental focus
· Communicate and make decisions more effectively
· Improve productivity
· Quiet’s noise in the mind
Meditation
Meditation is the tool we use to cultivate mindfulness. With meditation, you intentionally pay attention to a particular object as a way to strengthen concentration. There are thousands of meditative techniques: Tai Chi, yoga, focusing on the breath and using a mantra are all examples. People often think that meditating “correctly” means clearing all thought from the mind. This is a myth. The mind never stops thinking – it’s when we get caught up in our thoughts that we lose mindfulness. By witnessing thoughts, allowing them to pass, and returning to your chosen object of focus, you can actually build the muscle of concentration. Think of meditation as a fitness routine for the mind.
Are there other benefits to mindfulness?
In addition to boosting brain power, numerous research studies have shown significant physical benefits including:
· Reduced blood pressure
· Lowered cholesterol levels
· Enhanced immune function
· Reduced headache, migraine, back pain
· Improved respiratory function
Mindfulness does not require a particular set of beliefs in order to learn and practice – it is a quality of mind, accessible and available to all.
Mindfulness allows us to live every moment fully without the filters of bias, judgment or emotional reaction.
Mindfulness helps the body cope with physical challenges such as headaches, back pain and even heart disease.
Mindfulness keeps us from reacting too quickly – it helps increase the gap between impulse and action.
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Self-Control Can Drain Your Memory
The human body has a finite amount of resources, and scientists are always discovering more about how these resources are shared, depleted, and replenished. Now a new study suggests that the areas in your brain responsible for self-control and forming memories are closely linked – in other words, if you’re concentrating hard on staying disciplined, you’re probably becoming less adept at remembering what’s happening.
Researchers Yu-Chin Chiu and Tobias Egner from Duke University in the US asked a group of volunteers to recognise a series of faces, both with and without the inclusion of a self-control test in the middle. They found that having to exercise self-control had a negative impact on the participants’ ability to recall which pictures they’d previously seen. The same experiment was then repeated with a new set of volunteers and brain-scanning fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) equipment on hand.
The pair discovered that one area of the brain – the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex – was activated frequently during the self-control test and predicted the strength of the volunteers’ memory later on. The findings suggest that self-control and memory compete for the same resources inside the brain, and support the theory that inhibiting ourselves can also cause us to forget more easily.
“The control demands of response inhibition divert attention away from stimulus encoding, thereby weakening memory traces for inhibitory cues,” the researchers conclude in The Journal of Neurosience. “These findings shed new light on the relation between the control process of response inhibition and the cognitive domains of perception, attention, and memory.”
The self-control test used was a traditional Go/No-Go task: these tasks work by asking participants to view a series of items and push a button only when certain criteria are met – in the case of this experiment, when the face shown is male rather than female. The theory is that those who are able to hold back from a button push when necessary are those with the strongest self-control (or “response inhibition”, as neuroscientists like to call it). The participants were not told in advance that they would need to remember the faces they were shown.
“The scans revealed that responding to a cue and inhibiting a response produced overlapping activation patterns in brain regions within the right frontal and parietal lobes, a network that has previously been implicated in response inhibition,” Mo Costrandi reports for The Guardian. “Crucially, ‘no-go’ trials produced greater activation of this network than ‘Go’ trials, and activity in one specific brain region (the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex) predicted the strength of the participants’ memory, such that the greater the observed network activation, the more likely the participants were to forget that face later on.”
The researchers admit their theory is still “speculative” for now, but if further study confirms the link, they believe their discovery could be used to treat people who have problems with self-control: those suffering from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), for example, or some form of addiction.
One scenario put forward by the pair is having to suddenly cancel a lane change on the motorway because a car is already in the spot you want to move into. If they’re right, the act of having to control and inhibit your actions would make it less likely that you would remember the details of the incident – such as the make and model of the car that was blocking your path.
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Gulf Fritillary Coloring Page
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Eastern Wood Pewee Coloring Page
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Anger Management
Over the years I have facilitated anger management groups. I use a variety of handouts and activities to have a process oriented group interaction. One of the hand outs I use is below. I use it in 1 of 2 ways. I have folks fill it out first and then we discuss or we go through it together and discuss. We explore as a group, learning from each other.
ANGER WORDS
anger disgust grumpiness rage aggravation dislike hate resentment agitation envy hostility revulsion annoyance exasperation irritation scorn bitterness ferocity jealousy spite contempt frustration loathing torment cruelty fury mean-spiritedness vengefulness destructiveness grouchiness outrage wrath
Other:_________________________
Prompting Events for Feeling Anger
Losing power.
Losing status.
Losing respect.
Being insulted.
Not having things turn out the way you expected.
Experiencing physical pain.
Experiencing emotional pain.
Being threatened with physical or emotional pain by someone or something.
Having an important or pleasurable activity interrupted, postponed, or stopped.
Not obtaining something you want (which another person has).
Other:_______________________________
Interpretations That Prompt Feelings of Anger
Expecting pain.
Feeling that you have been treated unfairly.
Believing that things should be different.
Rigidly thinking “I’m right.”
Judging that the situation is illegitimate, wrong, or unfair.
Ruminating about the event that set off the anger in the first place, or in the past.
Other:____________________________
Experiencing the Emotion of Anger
Feeling incoherent.
Feeling out of control.
Feeling extremely emotional.
Feeling tightness or rigidity in your body.
Feeling your face flush or get hot.
Feeling nervous tension, anxiety or discomfort.
Feeling like you are going to explode.
Muscles tightening. .
Teeth clamping together, mouth tightening.
Crying; being unable to stop tears.
Wanting to hit, bang the wall, throw something, blow up.
Other:__________________________
Expressing and Acting on Anger
Frowning or not smiling; mean or unpleasant facial expression.
Gritting or showing your teeth in an unfriendly manner.
Grinning.
A red or flushed face.
Verbally attacking the cause of your anger; criticizing.
Physically attacking the cause of your anger.
Using obscenities or cursing.
U sing a loud voice, yelling, screaming, or shouting.
Complaining or bitching; talking about how lousy things are.
Clenching your hands or fists.
Making aggressive or threatening gestures.
Pounding on something, throwing things, breaking things.
Walking heavily or stomping; slamming doors, walking out.
Brooding or withdrawing from contract with others.
Other:_____________________
Aftereffects of Anger
Narrowing of attention.
Attending only to the situation making you angry.
Ruminating about the situation making you angry and not being able to think of anything else.
Remembering and ruminating about other situations that have made you angry in the past.
Imagining future situations that will make you angry.
Depersonalization, dissociative experience, numbness.
Intense shame, fear, or other negative emotions.
Other:______________________
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3 Dietary Interventions that Can Help Children with ADHD
Are dietary interventions effective for treating ADHD? For many parents and professionals, trying to parse through the different claims about the impact of diet on ADHD has been challenging and confusing. At this point, substantial research on how dietary interventions impact ADHD has accumulated and several meta-analyses of this work have been published. Recently, a review of several meta-analyses of dietary interventions for ADHD was published [Research review: The role of diet in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder — an appraisal of the evidence on efficacy and recommendations on the design of future studies]. In this paper, the authors summarize findings across 6 different meta-analyses of the impact of diet on ADHD to provide a high level summary of the best available evidence to date.
Types of dietary interventions
Three types of dietary interventions were reviewed — Restricted Elimination Diets (RED), Artificial food coloring exclusion (AFCE), and supplementation with free fatty acids (SFFA). Although other types of supplements beyond free fatty acids have been investigated, the authors felt there was not sufficient research on any single approach to include in their summary.
1. Restricted elimination diets (RED) — There are 2 different approaches to implementing this diet. In one approach, the child is placed on an extremely restricted diet, e.g., rice, turkey, a range of vegetables (lettuce, carrots, cauliflower, cabbage, beets), pears and water; this is sometimes referred to as the Few Food Diet. When a reduction in ADHD behaviors results — this would generally occur within 2–3 weeks if the diet is going to have a positive effect — new foods can be added back one at a time to see if they are well-tolerated or lead to an increase in problem behaviors. Alternatively, particular foods that are suspected to exacerbate a child’s symptoms may be removed one at a time to see if the child’s behavior improves.
2. Artificial food coloring exclusion (AFCE)- As the title indicates, this involves efforts to remove all artificial food colorings from a child’s diet, e.g.,Yellow #6, Yellow #5, Sodium Benzoate, Blue #2, etc., and observing whether this is associated with a reduction in ADHD behaviors. Carefully conducted trials have demonstrated that AFC’s – in amounts children could typically consume – can increase ADHD symptoms in many children.
3. Essential fatty acid supplementation — Certain fatty acids, e.g., Omega 3 and Omega 6, promote neural functioning. These fatty acids are called essential because they are not synthesized in the body and must be ingested. Children with ADHD may have lower levels of essential fatty acids relative to peers and several studies have demonstrated a link between low levels of EFAs and the severity of ADHD symptoms. Studies investigating the benefits of fatty acid supplementation for youth with ADHD raise fatty acid levels by administering capsules containing the fatty acids or sometimes by introducing diets rich in fish products. – See more at: http://www.creativitypost.com/science/3_dietary_interventions_that_can_help_children_with_adhd_especially_when_pr
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