Clay therapy is to be introduced for the rehabilitation of young people at Mount Carmel Hospital in a one-year project that nurses hope will become a permanent feature of therapy.
The Young People’s Unit within the hospital won The President’s Award for Creativity to enable it to carry out the project, in which children receiving treatment can express themselves and start to recover through art using clay.
YPU charge nurse Marion Saliba explained that the aim of the project, entitled An Empowering Art Journey, was to demonstrate the benefits of clay therapy in the hope of encouraging the authorities to introduce it on a permanent basis.
The YPU currently caters for five girls and seven boys aged between 12 and 17, although sometimes younger children are treated.
Children are admitted at an acute stage, displaying behaviour which might pose a danger to themselves or to others. The impetus spurring such behaviour would often stem from a variety of factors: mental health problems, a problematic family background and other psychosocial factors.
The project will be carried out with the help of an art therapist, who will process the work produced by the children.
“Clay therapy is very free and allows children to express themselves in a way they are often unable to manage with talk therapy,” said Ms Saliba.
“The art therapist would watch them create their clay tiles and would work towards understanding why they formed them in that particular way. For instance, if a child forms a knot, it might symbolise a feeling of suffocation while a sense of openness might indicate a desire for freedom.”
Through their clay works, children could be taught communication skills and emotional recognition coupled with getting a boost to their self-esteem.
The project will kick off this month in collaboration with Alka ceramics.
Alternative therapies
The Young People’s Unit needs to move away from a medication-based approach and incorporate alternative forms of therapy, the president of the Malta Association of Play Therapists has said.
Qualified play therapist Mary Rose Baldacchino stressed that many children admitted into the YPU often did not require medication and those who did, would still greatly benefit from receiving alternative forms of therapy such as play therapy. “By nature, children do not have problems,” Ms Baldacchino said. “But they carry the problems of their environment – be it problems in relationships at school or at home.
“These children are emotionally disturbed and require a lot of tender love and care because society does not accept them.”
Talk therapy did not work with children, mainly because they were not emotionally literate, making play therapy an especially powerful tool, she explained. Through the medium of play, confusion, anxieties and conflicts were slowly worked through.
The YPU also desperately required a new structure, with more nurses trained particularly in child development, children’s needs and trauma, Ms Baldacchino added.