HKU Bulletin June 2013 (Vol. 14 No. 3)

Moss from UK, local Chinese William Chao – who went to UK and came back. But Dr Potash is quick to add that the reason the Centre holds such a leading position in this area is the work of the people who founded and developed it over the past 10 years. “We are standing on the shoulders of the University’s own pioneers,” such as the Centre’s Founding Director Professor Cecilia Chan, Si Yuan Professor in Health and Social Work, and Dr Rainbow Ho, now Director of the Centre and a dance movement therapist. Jordan arrived from the US in September 2006, was introduced to Professor Chan, who invited him to research meetings at the Centre, then suggested he become a PhD student. He is now Lecturer and Assistant Programme Director of the new Masters. “We want the programme to have a broad sense of health so it doesn't get locked into just therapy or psychotherapy, but can also be applied to education sectors, community arts. The Centre’s approach is unique in that way.” He points out that, anthropologically speaking, the earliest forms of rituals involved in health and healing in every culture involved the arts – rhythmic music, meditating on visual images, creating visual images, dancing. “The arts are the oldest form of health practice and Art Therapy is very adaptable – many components – one, it’s relaxing and it simply makes you feel good, another is that you create images and you realise that those images have meaning to you. What do they say about your life at this moment, what do they help you to express that you couldn’t express in words. That’s the therapy or psychotherapy part. You can learn something about yourself, change something about you or your relationships. That’s the exciting part.” Burn-out prevention Art Therapy has many applications. The day before our interview, Dr Potash had been teaching third-year medical students – how When you dream, do you see images, or is the dream written out in words? That’s one of the first questions Dr Jordan Potash asks, when people ask him about Art Therapy. The next question is inevitably, what is Art Therapy? Dr Potash, who is a qualified Art Therapist and Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences’ Centre on Behavioural Health, explains: “It is using art and the creative process for increased emotional and mental health. At HKU we use a very broad definition of health so we use art for prevention, for wellness, to help people deal with chronic or terminal illness, as well as general life-suffering – stress, trauma, depression anxiety – a whole range.” “Usually when people use the term ‘Art Therapy’, it means visual arts – drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, collage etc – but here we emphasise the ‘expressive arts’ – a combination of art, dance, music, drama, poetry… all of the art forms.” The Centre on Behavioural Health was founded a decade ago with a mission to promote a holistic approach to health, using integrated body-mind-spirit approaches to health recovery and rehabilitation in addition to wellness and prevention. The Centre has become a leader in the field in Hong Kong and across much of Asia, and continuing its pioneering spirit, is about to offer Hong Kong and Asia’s first Master of Expressive Arts Therapy. Leaders in the field The stated aim of the programme is to cultivate competent clinical and educational specialists ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ ² · ´ ¸ ¹ º » ® ¼ · ½ ¾ ¶ ¼ ´ ¿ À ¯ Á ¸ ´ ¹ ¹ Â ¶ Ã ² Ä ¾ ¶ ¸ ³ Ã ² · ¾ ¶ ´ ¼ · ¹ · ± ³ Ã º Ã ² · ¾ ¶ Å ¶ ² · ¼ ¶ º ² Æ ¶ ¾ ´ Ç Ã º ± ¼ ´ ¸ È ¶ ´ ¸ · ¾ Artistic Impressions New Masters in Expressive Arts Therapy is a first for Hong Kong and Asia. Arts and Culture An art therapist can guide you through a process of finding meaning in what’s going on in your art and to see what that says about you and your unconscious, your emotions. ready to lead the development of expressive arts therapy in Hong Kong and Asia. “It’s an exciting time for us to be offering this,” says Dr Potash, who developed the Masters alongside Centre Director Dr Rainbow Ho. “People who do it will become leaders in the field in Hong Kong. Art Therapy started in the UK and the US in the 1960s. We have been able to take their 40 years of knowledge and incorporate it into the course.” People have been using arts in therapy and arts in health in Hong Kong since the 1980s. Psychiatrist Dr William Fan has done important work with the arts in Castle Peak Hospital. On the community arts side, Evelyna Liang was doing work years ago in the Vietnamese boat people refugee camps. The first trained art therapists came here in early 1990s – Judith to have empathy with patients and gain self- awareness. Last year he facilitated three separate six-week programmes with hospice workers on burn-out prevention in partnership with the Society for the Promotion of Hospice Care. He also recently co-coordinated a programme for people living with mental illness – depression, anxiety, psychosis, schizophrenia. In addition to Art Therapy treatment, they also had the chance to create an exhibit on what they wanted people to know about them. That exhibit was displayed around Hong Kong – at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, malls etc – people looked at the images and then they themselves were encouraged to make art on their emotional response to one of the drawings or paintings. What Art Therapy is not is looking at inkblots and interpreting them. “People have the wrong impression sometimes,” Dr Potash smiles. “I’m always reminded of the scene in the movie The Sixth Sense when the kid tells the psychologist how his mother was summoned to his school after he painted a particularly gory scene in art class. Bruce Willis asks what he draws now. ‘Rainbows,’ he answers, ‘people don’t have meetings about kids who draw rainbows!’” “It always makes people smile knowingly,” says Dr Potash, “But I also counter that by saying: ‘But, at any moment in time there are an infinite number of images you could have drawn – so why this one now?’ There’s more than one way of looking at things.” M É Ê Ë Ì Ê Í Î Ï Ð Ì Ñ Î Ò Ó 45 June 2013 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin