November 27, 2015
Anastasia’s Art: A Wellbeing Centre Story
October 10th was World Mental Health Day 2015, and PSS Head Office at Seel Street hosted an art exhibition “Art-tastic” where one of the pictures, named “Ladies’ Day”, was submitted by Anastasia Roberts, who uses services at our Leeson Centre.
Anastasia was referred to the centre in March this year suffering from depression and after having experienced her first psychotic episode. She first completed “Lifting moods and raising self-esteem” and “Anxiety Management” courses before starting a course of art therapy run by a Trainee Art Therapist Kate Prudom (University of Chester).
According to The British Association of Art Therapists, “art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses art as a medium to address emotional issues which may be confusing and distressing”. Kate created a safe, non-judgemental and confidential space for all art therapy service users in the centre she worked with. Anastasia describes art therapy as a process of detangling your thoughts, as if they were a ball of wool, followed by producing art images and then by finding words to describe your feelings, as an art therapist talks a client through their work. Having attended both group and individual art therapy sessions in the centre, she is now more in touch with her emotions, makes more sense of her health conditions and is able to better identify experiences which help her gain control over situations and nurture her.
Anastasia also joined a peer-led arts and crafts group in Leeson Centre and immediately felt that the people coming to this group are welcomed, accepted with warmth and encouraged to have a say over how the group is run and how sessions are planned. She was very excited and happy about her experience of leading the group over the course of one three-week project where seven group members each sewed a toy monkey by recycling a pair of stripy socks and filling them with toy filling. Sue White, the peer leader of the group, welcomed Anastasia to run another crafts project after Christmas.