ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses the benefits of art therapy groups, art-based creative programs and individual art therapy sessions for children, teenagers and young adults in different stages of cancer. It focuses on the physical and psychological concerns affecting children and teenagers with cancer, who must go through long, intensive and sometimes traumatic treatments, and their accompanying feelings of anxiety, depression, social isolation and even post-traumatic stress disorder. Art therapy can result eventually in a renewed psychological balance, stabilizing the young cancer patient’s self. Through this relationship, and the creative working-through process, the art piece can have a lasting physical legacy and connect patients to their peers in the group or to their families. One of the primary goals of art therapy is to bring forth and understand the internal world of our young cancer patients. Artistic expression and play for kids and teenagers with cancer can be a call for respite or wish for some control in an otherwise uncontrollable environment.