On the Importance of the Circle

Hello all! Sorry again for my delayed blog post. I had quite an eventful time down in Tucson these past couple days and I wanted to have a good amount of time to sit down and record it all.

Okay, to start, you're probably wondering about the title of this post...

"What's so important about circles, Tia?"

Well, my day at Bridges on Thursday was all about circles. Our art therapy project was mandalas. If you've never heard of such a thing, a mandala is a circular design. All mandalas share a few key characteristics:

1. A central point

2. A geometric nature

3. Symmetry of pattern

4. A purpose of representing the oneness of the universe, formed of multiple, diverse, and sometimes seemingly chaotic elements

Ms. Endreson and I knew the patients at Bridges were not going to be very familiar with mandalas so I spent my morning creating an example:

The materials I used were colored pencil, pastel, and marker 

The scale pictured is a Likert scale, a psychometric scale commonly used in research that employs surveys. The plan for the day was to measure patient stress levels before a mandala activity, immediately after, and after discussion using this scale. The scale is pretty simple, ranging from 1 to 10. Ms. Endreson and I had patients take three deep breaths and tell us how "tight" or "soft" their chests felt (to give them a more physical way to measure their stress). 1 was very tight, while 10 was very soft. The higher their number, the better they felt.

As you can see, when I made my example, I filled out my own Likert stress scale. I already felt pretty good at an 8, but after a bit of mandala action, I was a bit more relaxed at a 9.5.

Before we had the patients start on the art activity, we held a talking group session for about an hour. The importance of a circle came up immediately when Ms. Endreson pointed out the shape of our group seating. Yep, you guessed it: we were all sitting in a circle. There is something very significant about sitting in a circle with a group of people. It's as if the information shared within that circle gains a new importance and the members of the circle all connect in a new way.

During the group we talked with the patients about finding a balance and knowing when they are "good enough" or "feeling bad." One of the ideas I found very interesting was one that Ms. Endreson and explained to me earlier that day. Life itself is a circular journey; this is why, when we get rid of bad habits or change a pattern, we often feel strange. Sometimes, we encounter that bad habit or problem again and we become frustrated (we feel like are just going in circles). But it is important to know that going full circle doesn't mean you haven't made any progress; it means you have come to a "new level of mastery."

This idea was very applicable to many of the Bridges patients, who often leave and return to Bridges several times. One of the members in the group that day had been in and out of rehab more that 30 times. I found the idea of a circle and new levels very hopeful, and I hope the patients did as well.

Now onto the mandalas. Here are some of the brilliant pieces created by the patients. We gave each patient a blank circle template with a center point and told them to work for about 10 minutes. They worked for about 20 minutes and many became quite focused. We also had the patients give their pieces titles, which you can read in the captions:

The Star of Hearts

The Many Facets of My Life

Two Sharks Teeth

Our Earth 1st (This one was actually created by Cassie, the ASU Social Work Student who works in Bridges and decided to join us!)

Astronaut Ball

We provided the patients with oil and chalk pastels, a medium that was new to many of them. The artist of "Astronaut Ball" was so trilled with the new medium that he created two pieces and found new techniques of blending and smudging with the oil pastels. "I surprised myself!"he said, "I don't know how I did that." He was very eager to share each little detail of his work. 

The Likert scales either stayed the same or went up. The highest jump in the scale was a 3 to 8.5 from the artist who created the "Two Shark Teeth" piece. When asked how she felt while she was creating the pieces she responded: "I just let it take me." 

The artist who created "The Star of Hearts," when asked why he added in the stars, responded: "Well, they said 'let us in' so I just let them in!" 

After we exchanged complements and discussed our pieces, we checked in again with the patients and asked how they ranked on the Likert scale. One patient's score decreased from an 8.5 to a 7, but all the others increased by at least 1. 

Friday was a much slower day in the ward, but still very productive. I spent a long time reading through some articles that Ms. Endreson and I were able to retrieve from the hospital library in addition to an interesting study that one of Ms. Endreson's students conducted titled Improving the Effectiveness of Cognitive Based Therapies. The other two articles I read were titled The Use of Art Therapy with Persons with Dementia by Kirsten Camartin and Creativity and Dementia: Does Artistic activity affect well-being beyond the art class? by Susan M. Gross et al. 

I found the article by Susan M. Gross very applicable to my own project. It was a very structured study that used a well-being rating scale along with actual control and experimental groups. I of course cannot conduct such a detailed study, so reading about one was incredibly eye-opening. Overall, the study found that the well-being of patients did increase. 

In addition to dissecting several articles on Friday, I was also able to observe another session with the Value Game. A new patient with severe dementia seemed to form some sort of attachment to Ms. Endreson and I, so we had her sit down with us and take a look at the images. Of course, because of her dementia, she was not able to follow the formal directions of the game, but (like with the last few patients) she did enjoy the experience and did reveal some stories that she would have otherwise not been able to string together. The visuals prompted many responses from her, and she did have a few obvious favorites: 

We noted that each of her favorites contained a pair of companions. She made her love of dogs very obvious as well. 

Finally, at the end of the day on Friday (after the patients all took very long naps) we had a fun little activity of creating "Fantasy Pocket Books." I folded pieces of paper together to create tiny little books that patients could fill with images they picked from magazines. The images were meant to represent the things they would like to have if everything in their lives was magically fixed completely. Five patients wandered in by the end of the session and all perused through the magazines at their leisure. Two patients had severe dementia, so Ms. Endreson and I had to sit with them and flip through the pages until we saw their faces light up or heard them mention something like "Oh, that's beautiful" or "So cute." 

One patient was obviously hungry because he filled his picture book with images of food. The first page of his book read: "I love food and here are a few of the things I would love to eat." Other patients filled theirs with images of fish or images of flowers and gems. Ultimately, at the end of the day, each one of them had something small and personal to put in their pocket and serve as a little pick-me-up. 

I was so pleased with all the amazing work the patients did these past couple days and I am so glad I could share it with you. I only have two more weeks left on site, so I'm going to make the most of it. I hope to share some more awesome art with you soon! 

Until then, 

Tia