59-05-032 Proceeding

258 Proceedings of the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Congress process involved in artistic self-expression helps children resolve internal conflicts and issues, develop interpersonal skills, reduce stress, and increase self-esteemand self-awareness. CPCRoffers art therapy to individual children and groups as the treatment shelter. It helps achieve stability of self and sustaining well-being. There are art camps for a group of children who have been abused or sexual abused every year also. Ms. Saijai Srilim, art therapist at CPCR, described the concept of “open studio therapeutic art”, which do not have a set of specific criteria for who may be participate. Clients do not have to make a commitment to come every week, and new clients can join at any time. They can choose the materials as well as the theme of the artwork themselves (10) . Art therapy for disaster survivors Art therapy has been applied in various types of disaster. Since 2005, the survivors from tsunami in southern Andaman coast have been care by many teams of art therapists that come from many countries. After that the bulk of knowledge in art therapy were convey widely. In 2005, there are art activities for the survivors from tsunami at the Ban-nam-khemSchool in Phang-Nga province by Faculty of Art, Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi, in cooperation with the organization – Lantern of the East Los Angeles (LELA). The art activities set for 10 days, which contains singing and dancing, drawing freehand, painting the invention of a doll with anxiety, making silk flags of our community, fresco creation of the village together, creating cocoons, folding origami crane - birds of hope, and the art of movement.The final activity was exhibitions of alive art, works of fine art activity and the art of movement, for regaining of the bird in the story telling. These activities reveal that there has been a positive outcome and had a summary of lessons learned for the future as well (11) . In 2006, there was art therapy program for children who suffer from flood disasters and landslide at Laplae district, Uttaradit province, by Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts and Faculty of Public Health, Burapha University, Chonburi, in cooperation with Rajanagarindra Institute of Child Development, Chieng Mai. The program set art activities 2 - 3 hours per session, weekly for 12 weeks. The art therapist attended the weekly sessions and provided the children with the supplies necessary for doing artwork and urged them to draw anything they wanted to on the paper provided everyweek. It was concluded that the art therapy practice in this group of children yielded considerable success as evidenced in 7 of the 8 subjects. The investigators suggest that art therapy is an alternative approach that has been effective in the initial phase, patients with symptoms that were not so severe that they would require conventional psychiatric therapy (12) . In 2008, the author had joined the Thai medical teams under the Patronage of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn in collaborate with the Union of Myanmar government, the second team. The mission was to take care the victims of the cyclone “Nargis” in Myanmar. I applied art therapy in group psychotherapy for the children whom the victims of the