Places We Practice • 219Art can also sensitize medical professionals to a patient’s feeling about his illness and
treatment. A boy named Eddie was helped to talk about his diabetes by being asked to first
draw his fears related to the illness and to then talk about the drawings (I). For example, a
psychologist asked children with serious diseases to draw pictures about some of the pro-
cedures they had to have—like dialysis or blood transfusions (J). The drawings helped their
doctors to be more empathic and therefore more effective (Figure 10.3).
In a study funded by the American Nurses Foundation, Ellie Irwin and I invited children
to tell stories and draw pictures before and after surgery. Body image distortions in the
Figure 10.1 Susie’s drawing early in Alzheimer’s. Reprinted from Arts in Psychotherapy, vol. 11, pp. 165ff, 1984, with
permission from Elsevier Science.
Figure 10.2 Susie’s drawings later in the disease process. Reprinted from Arts in Psychotherapy, vol. 11, pp. 165ff, 1984,
with permission from Elsevier Science.