07.09 | 18:00 (EEST)

Art therapy is a powerful method of helping a person who has suffered mental trauma. It provides opportunities to restore personal resources and create new ones; to work simultaneously with corporal, figurative and emotional components of the perception of the traumatic experience; to release and comprehend intense feelings associated with traumatic events; to rethink these events and build new productive life strategies that will contribute to post-traumatic personality development. Working on psychological assistance and art therapy are necessary for psychological rehabilitation after psycho-traumatic events. Media art therapy is the newest type of art therapy that uses the possibilities of information and communication technologies to overcome the consequences of traumatic events. Media art therapy can pave the way to overcoming collective cumulative trauma because media creativity is a means of overcoming the effects of psychotraumatization. An essential step on the way to overcoming collective trauma is the creation of art objects related to traumatic events. Through the experience of traumatic events on the screen, one can react to suppressed feelings and move to the reconstruction stage of overcoming the consequences of traumatic events.

Creating animation on socially significant topics - such as war and peacemaking - is an opportunity to share one's achievements with others and contribute to overcoming collective traumatization, developing society, and reaching a new level of understanding of social media reality.

Olena Voznesenska, candidate of psychological sciences, senior researcher at the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, co-founder and president of the Art Therapy Association, Board of Directors member of the National Psychological Association.