Emotional Lessons : Art Therapy Helps Children Conquer Earthquake Fears

Eight-year-old Erica Castellanos was happily talking to fellow students and assorted strangers--even a pair of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers--at Mark Twain Middle School in Mar Vista last week. It wasn’t always that way, said her grandmother, Madeline Reyes.

“She would push people away,” said Reyes. “She’d be in her own little world.”

Erica and about 200 children from 10 Westside schools were at Mark Twain to be congratulated for completing trauma therapy groups at their schools.

Under the nine-week program, organized after last year’s Northridge earthquake with a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, teams of therapists worked with children once or twice a week to help them express pent-up anxiety about the quake and other problems. The effort was administered by the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Psychological Trauma Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

The counselors first used art therapy--assigning them, for instance, to draw their impressions of the earthquake. Then they encouraged the children to talk. At first, the artwork consisted of pleasing portraits of homes and families but later became more disturbing, depicting such scenes as trucks plunging off freeways, said Suzanne Silverstein of the Psychological Trauma Center.

By drawing, she said, the children “were learning how to deal with their feelings, and how to cope.” The next step was to help the children give voice to their feelings. Two therapists would spend a day with a group of students, who were selected with the help of parents and teachers.

The goal was to get them to talk not only about the earthquake, but also about other buried wounds, said Merdice Ellis, a counselor from Cedars-Sinai. Children of single parents spoke of loss, Ellis said. Others talked about life in the midst of gang violence, a subject some of the children had dismissed initially as “no big deal.”

The key, said Ellis, was teaching the children to express their concerns.

“Many of the children were not used to having an adult in their life they could talk to,” said Ellis. Counselors had to work hard to build trust, she said.

“We tried to teach them that it was OK to feel anger or sadness,” she said. The children were encouraged to handle their problems at school in a constructive manner by telling a teacher when they feel sad or angry, she said.

Children in the program have shown improved attitudes and performance, said faculty and administrators at the schools. Silverstein said schools have begun considering ways to resume the counseling, which FEMA funded on an emergency basis.

“The counseling fulfilled a need the children have to connect with adults,” said Angela Reuser, Marina del Rey Middle School principal. Problems that occur at home, said Reuser, show up in the classroom.

“The faculty has worked with the counselors, and followed up by trying to see what is going on at home,” she said.

Erica, a third-grader at Beethoven Street Elementary school, said she will miss what she calls her “feelings class.”

“I got to express my feelings, and I felt better. I learned not to be scared of anything in life,” Erica said.

Silverstein said that for Erica and other youngsters, such lessons are crucial.