Date of Award

Fall 9-15-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MA - Master of Arts

Department

Expressive Therapies

Advisor

Raquel Stephenson

Abstract

Acknowledging the Asian community’s racial trauma during the COVID-19 is extremely important for the mental health community to understand as the impact of collective trauma can be significant on an individual. Discussions on how racism could play a major role in aggravating collective trauma have been re-ignited due to the COVID-19. This literature review aims to introduce a different perspective from an Asian-identifying person as part of the minority groups that have been amid racial prejudice and hatred in the United States, what they are experiencing during this time, and how the pandemic impacts their mental health. By analyzing existing research on collective trauma and examining how art therapy can help address and treat collective trauma including racial trauma enhanced by the pandemic-related racism, the review concludes that art therapy can promote healing from collective trauma for Asian communities. The review also puts forward a new direction for a developing idea on post-COVID-19 treatments and summarizes personal insight and experiences of an art therapist in training to facilitate healing during the COVID-19. Although there has been insufficient understanding of the collective trauma arising from the pandemic and expressive arts therapeutic interventions, this review, by examining the complex collective trauma and art therapy strategies, suggests art therapy as a useful therapeutic instrument based on creative psychotherapeutic logic for Asian communities in mental health crisis.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Download

Share

COinS
 

Rights

The author owns the copyright to this work.