In this video, several therapists including: Dr. Sandra Graves-Alcorn, Dr. Judy Rubin, and Dr. Robert Coles, discuss how children experience grief and speak about their work in sessions with children who have lost a loved one. We see Dr. Graves-Alcorn in a session with a boy whose mother was killed in a motorcycle accident. Dr. Coles conducts a drawing session with a boy whose uncle was killed.
Throughout numerous vignettes we hear from patients who art therapy has helped them with their grief. Specifically, a woman talks about how art therapy helped her to mourn her daughter, a little girl writes a letter to her departed daddy, an art therapy group of children who have lost parents to cancer, and individual art therapy with a deaf child whose mother has died.
The collection of vignettes on art and grieving highlights professional therapists, grieving clients, and the work of professional artists – like one woman in a NJ town impacted by 9/11 who draws portraits of loved ones from photographs given to her by survivors – whose work are rich examples of how art therapy can be utilized throughout the grieving process.
