'Art' A medium of healing
by Shashank Trivedi

Art therapist - Dr. Ashok Shah

Many times, it happens that while at leisure, one just draws or pens down a sketch at random. Similarly, once Manish was penning down some lines, while sitting down doing almost nothing. And to his surprise, after few moments he felt a sense of relief in what he was doing.

It was an achievement, considering that the 30-year-old man was suffering from personality disorder. A mental abstraction in which makes him thinks he is a different person, a problem for which he had consulted many doctors and psychiatrists without success.

Today he is happily surprised, thanks to the relief he got from his adventures with paper and pencil. And thus, he discovered art therapy. He came into contact with Dr. Ashok Shah, the only art-therapist of India. Ashok shah is a post-graduate in graphic art from faculty of fine arts at the M.S. University, Baroda.

At 45, with Masters in Creative Art Therapy from Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, U.S.A., says art therapy is not a new system of medicine. In fact many a depressed souls of the 40’s after the Second World War were successfully treated. Many handicapped persons too consulted him. Explaining ‘art therapy’ he says that after hearing case history of patients, we give them blank paper and pencil and allow them to draw whatever comes to their mind. We analyse these pictures and try to find out the root cause of the disease while talking to them. Sometimes, patients find it difficult to express their difficulty by words and are able to express it by sketching or drawings on a blank paper. In many cases, there are some good creations after the peal of depression whereas sometimes these patients regain their lost confidence, says Ashokbhai. Art therapy has been applied even on the patients of Con & Aids around the world.

Mr Shah has been associated with B.M. Institute at Ahmedabad for the last 23 years curing mentally retarded children. Art Therapy Association has been officially recognized in U.S.A. What can be better treatment than the one he did on a 19 years old Yusuf of Vadodara, who used to sit in the corner of his home from last nine years. Today he handles a garage of bicycles on his own, as he was cured of his mental sickness by art therapy. Though art therapy is considered only as an additional treatment, its application is enhancing in more & more diseases.

Ashokbhai also has many awards to his credit like National Artist Research Fellowship Award (Dept. of Culture, Govt. of India 1995-97), Mentor Award (Sunday School for Handicapped Children Friends Society, Vadodara – 1991). Ashokbhai has written many articles related to art therapy, many of them published in U.S.A.

Ashokbhai has also been awarded the GEM of Alternative Medicines, at the fifth international congress of alternative medicine in Calcutta for his contribution to the field. He himself with no indication of becoming a therapist or social wonder was drifted in this activity simply because of his altruism. Let us hope that art takes the form of a healing process in our country very soon.

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