Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - Activities Therapy

The Activity Therapies Department in Psychiatry provides patients with opportunities, through structured activities such as Art Therapy, Drama Therapy, Music Therapy, Dance Therapy, Psychodrama, and Recreation Therapy, to deal directly with their primary conflicts that led to hospitalization. The work is done in group or individual sessions and, through the course of guided and structured experiences, allows the patients to express hidden thoughts and feelings about themselves and their world. They are provided with avenues to symbolically and creatively reach more satisfying ways of interacting with both the external and internal world of their experiences.

A variety of possibilities are presented to the patients through therapeutic activities that can help them find productive ways of dealing with unstructured time in their lives to reach an enhance quality of life and avoid destructive habits that have, in the past, only provided temporary and inadequate ways of dealing with feelings of emptiness. There is special effort to address cognitive skill building and pre-vocational needs, such as building the capacities to complete a task, delay gratification, tolerate frustration, and listen and comprehend as well as the capacity to express one's self both verbally and non-verbally.

Finally, there is every effort to provide the patient with as many opportunities as possible to have positive, corrective emotional experiences that will add to a storehouse of good memories and a brighter, realistic sense of hope that will sustain them long after discharge and help them find the strength and resources in their community that will prevent regression and self-destructive behavior.

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