#TITLE_ALTERNATIVE#

• Main Author: RISWARIE , ARDHANA
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/11849
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

This research is based on how often disasters strike Indonesia and how severe are the effects on children. A disaster always takes something inside a child, their parents, their friends and most of all their childhood. To prevent PTSD or Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder and to give the children a chance to regain a better future filled with optimism, a psychological intervention must be done. Art therapy is a form of a creative intervention, which has been used for trauma cases from the 1970’s, especially in the Western world. However, it has not been applied as much in Indonesia up until today. The targets of art therapies applied in the Western world are to enable children to retell the traumatic story in a safer environment, to bring up the remaining negative feelings related to the trauma and to encourage teamwork in order to help each other expressing their feelings in artworks. The method used to conduct this research is experimentation with a descriptive approach, which does not focus on its efficacy. Samples were taken from Media Kasih Islamic Orphanage in Banda Aceh, exactly 4 main samples and 6 supporting samples. The main samples were chosen because they were directly affected by tsunami, were living in the devastated area and lost their family to it. The research was due for 4 weeks in the orphanage without controlling much of their daily activities. A need assessment was conducted during the survey in a form of an interview to discover their psychological condition related to the tsunami. Eight group sessions, a visual journal and three individual sessions (only main samples took part in) were decided posterior to the need assessment. The artworks made during the 12 sessions are gathered and analyzed for emotional expressions related to the traumatic event. This research discovered that some of the activities from the Western art therapy method, especially the ones that involved cooperating with each other, did not work well with the children in the orphanage. A prolonged period, up to 6 months in estimation, was needed to design a perfect art therapy method. In addition, the involvement of child clinical psychologists was also needed to find out the degree of efficacy for every session. Not all children were able to express themselves in an artwork; it may be due to their lack of enthusiasm towards art and their comfort in some common themes, such as landscapes. Some children, however, showed their sadness, loneliness and conflict in their artworks, which confirmed the effects of the trauma of losing their family to tsunami. In general, this research has successfully analyzed a method in designing an art therapy and revealed expressions contained in the children’s artworks.