Back to life through a drawing

The lives of people who end up in psychiatric hospitals are divided into two parts: before and after. They find it extremely difficult to readapt to the surrounding world during and after hospitalization: deep in their hearts they feel that they will never be the same again. There are a lucky few who, after their release, have access to medico-social rehabilitation centers, where they can discuss their problems, listen to what their peers say, and take up arts and crafts: learning how to draw, knit, and make things out of beads and clay, do pottery, etc.

For the past 15 years the Kyiv- based charity Kastalia Foundation has been conducting art therapy classes at the Psychiatric and Neurological Hospital No. 1. Its executive secretary Iryna Pievska admits that at first it was very difficult, but now the world has opened up to them, so more projects can be launched for people with mental illness.

The latest project, called Art Bridge, was funded with money raised almost a year ago at a charity auction of 70 paintings by about 40 well-known Ukrainian artists. Thanks to the support of these artists, psychiatric hospitals and homes for intellectually underdeveloped people have been holding art classes, with the best works exhibited at the Kastalia Foundation.

“The main idea of our work is to help mental patients tap their creative potential and find a way out of their inner world,” Pievska says. “We have been working in this field for a long time. We try to promote and circulate the works of people with mental illness. The key goal is to turn these individuals towards society and society towards them. We have finally succeeded. The need to rehabilitate psychiatric patients through art has received support from the government, and documentation aimed at introducing drug-free methods into rehabilitation programs has already been drafted. We also took part in drafting this document. But I must emphasize that we have been doing this work for a long time, without waiting for the go-ahead from upstairs, because we cooperate with foreign partners and know the way Europe is resolving these problems.”

Three hundred psychiatric patients participated in the project, producing 300 drawings and as many life tragedies and painful stories. Their drawings portray an assortment of themes: everyday objects, abstract subjects, like music and dancing, self-portraits, and portraits of doctors. The artists worked with volunteer students, art therapists, Kyiv-based artists, and schoolteachers from the Waldorf Schools in Austria. Everyone was free to choose pencils, colors, or felt pens. Tetiana Panibudlaska, an art therapist and Art Bridge participant, saw the birth of almost all these art works. She thinks they are very revealing and is ready to talk endlessly about the benefits of painting for all people, whether healthy or sick. “When people are admitted to an intensive care unit (especially the first time), they are given drugs for three days. After this they usually come to their senses and that’s when they become confused: they begin to be aware of their situation and their health problems and conjure up a sombre picture of the future. They see other patients around them, and the hospital’s very atmosphere is also depressing,” Tetiana told The Day.

“At this stage, patients accept the invitation to draw — with or without a theme, very often spontaneously. Two or three sessions are enough to begin to change a patient. Painting is a good resource and support; it is a source of joy, even apart from the medical aspect. There is a different situation in group homes for the intellectually challenged. These people are not psychiatric patients. The group home is their place of residence, and they are encouraged to copy something in order to achieve a result. But we want something else: people should find a way to self-realization through art. This is important for people because, above all, they have an opportunity to express themselves creatively and, second, they communicate with each other here, since they are deprived of this in the customary cultural and social space. For them this is a celebration.”

Panibudlaska gives the following illustrative example. One day a female patient saw a knitting pattern — knit and purl stitches — in a book. She began drawing something that resembled those bumps, holes, dots, and hooks. Later, little mushrooms and flowers began cropping up in her drawings. The art therapist thinks this patient began to develop; she had understood that she was able to do something by herself.

Among the artists who took part in the charity auction and the opening of the art exhibit was Borys Yehyzarian. He recognizes the importance of art therapy because in Soviet times he spent time in both a mental hospital and a prison. What he badly needed there was a pencil and paints.

“I have a very serious attitude to this project because healing through painting is the credo of my creative work. I heal myself when I paint, and I think the same thing happens to people who look at my pictures,” he told The Day. “I have seen a lot since I began painting 30 years ago, including people who felt better and healthier when they were involved in art. I have seen a lot of artists, including those who were cured by art. As for this exhibit, I can see that these pictures are very serene. For example, the drawings made by a woman’s hand are the pictures of six— or seven-year- old children. I look through the eyes of an artist and see harmony in the structure and the color, I can feel beautiful music. In other words, sick people who have inner chaos and pain (mental illness is a veritable hell) paint to bring out this harmony and beauty. These childish pictures made by adults clearly display the soul’s yearning to heal. These people use drawing as an attempt to restart their lives from scratch, from childhood. And this spark in the soul, which breaks through into the world by means of beauty, is sure to heal them. They will heal by means of action.”

Art therapists who work with psychiatric patients are satisfied with their results. They say that when they visit a hospital where they’ve already held art classes, the patients immediately rush to take paints and crayons, perhaps their only joy in life. According to Pievska, eight psycho-neurological institutions in all the regions of Ukraine are using art therapy in their work with psychiatric patients. So the work continues, and the second charity auction, Art Bridge 2007, is expected to be one of the most illustrative stages of this therapeutic work.