Art therapy in pediatric oncology: when?
Art therapy in pediatric oncology entered the hospital wards around the 1970s. First of all through music and especially the relaxing and calming effect of music on those with mental disorders Art therapy, subsequently exported also to other hospital wards, especially pediatric oncology, is therefore an effective remedy for caring for the soul of those children who alternate between important physical therapies (chemotherapy, radiotherapy) and psychological care. It is important to keep alive the path of art therapy in pediatric oncology in all phases of the disease, so as to become an effective support in support of healing and care itself.
Art therapy in pediatric oncology: how?
The setting of art therapy in pediatric oncology is a laboratory or atelier equipped with low-cost materials and sufficiently large and safe spaces to allow freedom of movement, which are the body's non-verbal expression. In a hospital ward it would be sufficient to have a large waiting room with comfortable chairs, a stereo and a large table. The rest is brought by the art therapist, depending on the artistic technique she wants to use with the child: paper, colors, glue, scissors, mouldable materials, musical instruments, water colors and so on. Today there are many hospitals in almost all of Italy that offer this kind of support. Art therapists dealing with art therapy in pediatric oncology can be found in the department of oncological hematology of the San Martino Hospital in Genoa, which offers a weekly day of art therapy, or at the medical oncology of the Careggi Hospital in Florence, and again at the various pediatric oncology centers in Milan, Rome, Catania, Aviano, Perugia, Parma, Pavia, Verona. A useful visual document on how art therapy works in pediatric oncology is the documentary on the Pediatric Oncology Hospital of Kiev
Art therapy in pediatric oncology: why?
Although initially the art-therapeutic practices developed in a "mental" hospital context, they later became an essential practice in the "oncology" wards, in particular for the path of those children suffering from terminal illnesses (leukemia, tumors) and hospitalized ones. It is natural that these children present an emotional experience characterized by strong anxiety and anxiety and it is necessary on the part of those around them to be clear that the mind influences the body and vice versa. These negative emotions can however be externalized and above all exorcised and returned to the world through a creative product, which finds in infancy a much more fertile ground that is easier to walk than adulthood. The pain that causes the condition of cancer is such that it can slow down or even stop healing. This is why it is important to maintain a constant and constant level of communication of one's anxieties in order to direct positive energies towards physical care. Scientific research has shown that through pediatric cancer therapy pain is attenuated during the most acute phases, the child, while concentrating his mind on the work he is doing, dismisses the sense of physical malaise. For example, music therapy is a valuable tool to improve mood and relax, while body expression therapy contributes, through small movements in harmony with one's body, to recovering body size and metabolizing and processing any physical changes related to it to the tumor.
