The Marital and Family Therapy program at Loyola Marymount University, which in recent years has focused on how Latino families are impacted by cross-border migration, has enrolled its first two students from Mexico — two Mexican psychotherapists.
The two-year, 60-unit program offers a master’s degree in marital and family therapy that employs art therapy as a primary diagnostic and treatment tool. Art therapy utilizes “art-making” — such as drawings by patients — to help them communicate psychological needs and traumas. Often, traumas are difficult to discuss or psychiatric distress is not apparent to patients; the act of drawing or creating something out of clay, for example, allows the patient to express deep-seated issues, said Debra Linesch, department chair.
The program’s attention to Latino mental health care is purposeful, said Barbara Busse, dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts, which includes the Department of Marital and Family Therapy.
“Much of the cliental in public and private mental health environments in this region are Mexican, Mexican-American or Central American,” she said. “It is a growing population that needs professional services and their mental health issues are deeply affected by cross-border migration that ruptures families and complicates family life.”
“The real mission of the university and part of the historic, educational ethic of Catholic and Jesuit universities is to encourage our students to reach out and help people who are marginalized,” Busse added. “And that is exactly what we are doing.” The graduate program meets the educational requirements for licensing as marital and family therapist in California.
Since 2004, the department has run a three-week program in Mexico, where American students experience cultural immersion while using art therapy to support the work of an orphanage in San Miguel de Allende, near León. Mexican therapists can attend and earn a certificate in art therapy.
In 2010, there were “60 strong applicants” for the 20 spots in the master’s degree program, which requires a B.A. and significant course work in studio art, Linesch said. “A good number of them came to our program because they heard about the work we do in Mexico,” she added.
The summer program was also the route to LMU for the two Mexican therapists. One of them was enrolled and “was so enchanted with it that she enrolled full-time to get the master’s degree,” said Linesch.
Gabriela Osorio, one of the Mexican therapists, calls art therapy “a very useful tool for working with families. When a problem is very traumatic, I have used art because it was the way I could most easily access” the therapeutic issue. In particular, art therapy permits the patients “to externalize their problem so that it is outside of them, so that it doesn’t belong to them,” Osorio said. She then described therapy with an incest survivor who would not talk at all for the first 10 sessions. “We were just communicating through art,” using clay or with markers, she said.
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The painting at the top is by artist Melly Trochez, a second-year graduate student in the Marital and Family Therapy Program.
Melly Trochez is a second-year graduate student in the Marital and Family Therapy Program.
She writes about her painting, “The Process”:
It has many interpretations. The one most significant for me is the process of transforming my identity as an artist to that of an art therapist.
Before I started the program, I had some apprehension about the idea of change. It was important for me to begin this painting prior to starting the program as a way to externalize my anxiety and to facilitate this transition. Once the program started, continuing to work on the painting helped me cope with further change.