Addiction & Art Therapy

By Carlos de los Rios Möller, psychiatrist, psychotherapist and art therapist at Dianova, Viña del Mar, Chile

The use of art therapy in its different modalities with patients suffering from various diseases enables a resignification of the clinical profile and an effective relief of mental pathology.

Enriched by the contribution of art therapy, personal experience has allowed me to achieve, broadly, the following:

  • Reduce the use and abuse of psychopharmacological drugs.
  • Carry out an indirect clinical report in the group workshops through the direct manifestation of the graphic image on the white surface of the cardboard, since the image is what comes first to consciousness and then the
  • Apply color psychology with its correlative discursive narrative always above the images. Coupled with the temporal systematization in order to observe the evolution of the clinical profile through the evolution of the pen stroke, predominant color, location and spatial distribution of graphic elements.
  • Using psychotherapy through art humanizes the doctor-patient relationship as an inter-personal link. It increases self-esteem within a landscape of self-observation and self-knowledge.
  • As  perhaps a new paradigm in mental health, cross-lined only with occupational therapy in the field of psychosocial rehabilitation, the rigorous application of the art-therapy framework allows us to cross into the therapeutic field of repressed thoughts and experiences.

To conclude, let me point out the following statement from a user at the end of a session: