Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - Healing Arts:Creative Writing After-school Program for PS 811M

The Healing Arts: Creative Writing After-school Program was developed by Urban Word NYC, Riverview High School and the Bellevue Hospital’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry department to give the adolescent students of Bellevue High School, PS 811M, an opportunity to experience writing and performance. These poems are the product of the Healing Arts Workshop. Healing Arts was made possible by a grant received from the American Psychiatric Association to benefit minority mental health. Psychiatrist Eraka Bath saw the urgency for structured after-school activities offering teen’s worthwhile things to do in a safe environment during a time period notorious for high-risk behaviors among adolescents. Researchers have identified the hours between 2:30 pm and 7:30 pm as a prevalent time for violence, self-injury, drug use, pregnancy, and illegal activity among young persons between the ages of 12 and 17. After-school programs have a long and impressive history of keeping teens safe, supervised and inspired.

Students and staff explore the power of the written word as well as the cathartic experience of emotional and intellectual re-framing of individual and community issues that comes with the practice of sharing written words aloud in an environment of safety, encouragement and support. The group process moves from the personal to the collective in a gentle and empowering way by putting the legitimacy of freedom of personal written and spoken expression as the well spring from which all the writing flows. Appropriate self-expression, communication skills, creativity, spontaneity, community cohesion, and positive self-esteem (not to mention grammar and spelling) are the shared material of the group process.

The group develops social skills as much as writing and offers a place for safe and uncensored self-disclosure for these adolescents who have had emotional problems so severe that they need to be in school in a hospital setting. The goal is to write! To attempt to write well that which is true for you, to find one’s voice, and to let that voice be heard.

In this poetry workshop, everyone writes (including all the adult staff) and everyone shares their poetry, which levels of the hierarchy often at work in many school programs. The traditional roles of the participants (doctor, patient, troubled teen) and teaching models are intentionally blurred by this practice. The result is an emerging community of writers dedicated to an experience of both craft and inspiration without fear of censorship or judgment

The program is co-led by a clinically trained creative arts therapist, psychiatrists, and Urban Word NYC, a locally based program that encourages creative expression in adolescents through the media of poetry and spoken word. Healing Arts meets weekly for 10 sessions and culminates in a performance that showcases the work written by the students throughout the semester. The students may also gain a unit of credit towards high school graduation, based on their participation, attendance and submitting a portfolio of a body of work. Selected poems from the students’ portfolios will be combined into a Healing Arts anthology.

We provide our patients with therapeutic interventions designed to improve self-expression and to facilitate corrective emotional experiences. Urban Word facilitates our treatment and educational goals while adding enormously to each child’s self esteem. These are some of the most compromised and underserved children in the New York City area. Our kids come from a variety of very stressful environments and have often suffered from the debilitating effects of physical and emotional abuse and abandonment, often at the hands of their primary caregivers. These teens typically write and perform poetry for two hours at a time and the participants seek no break. None of the original students have stopped coming. Many other students have either joined or visited and we hope will return.
Officials from the High School report that overall the students participating in the workshop seem to be benefiting both in the classroom and socially. Some are writing and reading with more enthusiasm. Some are becoming more prepared and motivated in the classroom. Some of the students who have histories of acting out in dangerous ways have 100% attendance and write furiously and productively during groups. Some chronically isolated, depressed and shy students have found their voices and have become less withdrawn and more vocal and present members of their school and community. Some who have been chronically unmotivated to participate in school now walk with a notebook of their own poetry under their arms and are seen writing on their free time. Poems have appeared on the school bulletin boards and the poets have achieved a new dignity and connection with the larger hospital community.

Click here for video of a poetry reading by the students NEW!

Click here for poetry written by the students NEW!

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