Art Therapy: The Benefits for Sick Children

Art therapy uses creative expression to provide individuals with a safe outlet for expressing thoughts and emotions to successfully facilitate recovery from psychological distress. It is an intervention method that traditionally has drawn from psychoanalytic theory for its framework and procedures. A breadth of current art therapies, informed by a variety of theoretical paradigms, share a common procedure that uses creative art as a method for promoting expression and healing. Art is a natural form of self expression for children it is one way that allows them to interact with, and understand their environment. For the child to draw is a form of game, for example M. Klein does not distinguish in interpretation between game and drawing although there are some experiences that show as there are differences between the graphic processing and imaginative elaboration. To draw is one of the favorite game of children, and as a game can be used in psychotherapy. It performs two functions: a function of releasing, in which the child actively reproduces an unpleasant experience he suffered, and the anguish can be externalized. The second function is symbolic in which the children immerse themselves in a fantasy world where every desire can be accommodated and realized through the temporarily and partially lack of the reality principle and the precepts of the superego, to create a symbolic play, thanks to which the child can express emotions functional to its welfare [1].