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Mediating adolescents' insights into shared traumatic experiences through drawings
Abstract
Drawings as mediators of communication are utilised in multiple contexts across national and cultural divides. The value of drawings in eliciting meaning that transcends the boundaries of words has been documented for centuries. In educational practice, drawings are utilised in a wide range of settings, ranging from therapeutic to psycho-educational assessment, disclosure in forensic and sexual abuse cases, and for artistic expression. Furthermore, research confirms the usefulness of drawings in empowering marginalised populations from a participatory action-research stance. Using drawing in research to mediate communication in a group context when studying adolescent perceptions of a traumatic event has not been explored extensively in South Africa. This study therefore sought to explore adolescents' experiences of a shared traumatic incident as facilitated through their drawings. The research process set out to answer the following research question: What insights regarding adolescents' experiences of a shared traumatic incident can be gained from using drawing in a group context? This investigation is underpinned by an eco-systemic theoretical perspective which recognises the influence of the community in the experiences of its individual members. The African concept of ubuntu, meaning "whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual", thus informs the research. Within the context of psychoanalytical theory in trauma research, international literature acknowledges that families and communities are important resources to help bring about healing. The findings of this study confirm that the dynamic interaction between personal factors and interpersonal factors relating to one's peers, family and community influence how individual and collective experiences are shaped and assimilated. The findings of the study led me to conclude that drawing became a non-confrontational facilitator for traumatised participants to express difficult feelings that may otherwise have been silenced. Furthermore, in addition to self-expression, the co-analysing of drawings in a group context created opportunities for collective remembrance. Its potential to empower marginalised populations such as the adolescent participants in this study to express their views on social injustice also emerged. The study's findings could serve as a motivator for further investigation of drawings as mediators of communication in a variety of traumarelated educational settings. Thesis (MEdPsych (Educational Psychology)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007.
... Similarly to the DrawingOut method, many of these studies departed from a participatory research paradigm, using drawings as an inclusive technique to empower marginalised groups in setting their own health research agenda, while simultaneously emphasising the idea that participation is not dependent on artistic skills [33]. Previous drawing-based research can broadly be divided into studies that explore drawing as a research method that facilitates knowledge production [6], both at the individual and group level (shared experiences) [34,35], and studies that use pictures to support health communication [14]. What is innovative about DrawingOut is that it combines these goals (knowledge production and communication) into a fully participatory process that results in a tangible output that is co-produced by researchers and participants. ...
A growing body of literature has explored the potential for arts-based methods to generate and disseminate research, particularly on sensitive or complex topics. This article presents DrawingOut, a metaphor-centred drawing workshop designed to collect visual and textual data about individuals’ experiences of sensitive or taboo health experiences. The visual data, consisting of the artwork produced by participants, and the textual data, all conversations and discussions occurring during the workshop, can also be used to create engaging outputs for dissemination. We piloted DrawingOut in a study of nine women with a minority ethnic or religious background in Cardiff, UK. The women were invited to participate in a series of structured drawing activities. The conversations occurring during the workshop were recorded and then subjected to thematic analysis. Results showed that women’s views and experiences could be grouped in eight major themes covering their wellbeing, relationship with others, and healthcare views and experiences. We produced an A5 16-page booklet that presents the pilot study results, illustrated with participants’ own drawings and quotes, which was disseminated among participants, their community and other relevant stakeholders. This pilot study supports the view that healthcare actors can use the DrawingOut method to engage people to talk about sensitive health topics, while simultaneously providing them with an enjoyable and empowering research experience. In our pilot study the DrawingOut was successful in eliciting rich visual and textual data that captures a diversity of views and experiences, with the added benefit that these can be used to produce engaging outputs for dissemination.
In the visual as well as word-orientated world that the qualitative researcher increasingly finds herself in, a critical stance
about ethics and its relation to qualitative data-gathering methods is long overdue. The growing popularity of technology
and the user-friendliness of cameras and videos have led to an increase in the use of visual-oriented tools. Consequentially,
critical reflection by the researcher about what is ethical, and what is right in the behaviour of researchers when collecting
and using visual images in educational research, is needed. Due to qualitative research not being associated with physical
manipulation or intrusive measures, an assumption could be perpetuated that its processes pose no or minimal risks to participants.
However, witnessing how identifiable visuals of vulnerable populations are being shown during dissemination of findings in
the public domain, has led me to question the ethics of such practices. In a world of litigation, defamation of character
and misrepresentation, educational researchers have to be knowledgeable about ethical concerns that are raised about trust
within the research relationship and the rights of those who are depicted in the photographs. This chapter provides an overview
of the merits of visual-oriented tools in research contexts where the researcher has to cross into an unfamiliar culture,
ethnicity and language. It follows with the ethics concerns that should guide the decisions of using visual data methods in
research. Lastly, the author reflects on the ethical challenges that researchers face when analysing visual data.
Abstract It is fitting that a volume on post-traumatic stress includes chapters on sexual assault given both the prevalence of sexual assault and its effects. Specifically, in terms of prevalence, approximately one woman in five in the United States will be raped in her lifetime (Koss, 1993).1 In terms of the effects of sexual assault, victims experience heightened fear, anxiety, and depression for several months, and sometimes years, following an assault (see Frazier Norris, 1992; Ullman & Siegel, 1994). In a recent national study of trauma exposure and PTSD by Kessler and his colleagues (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, & Nelson, 1995), almost half of the women who said that a rape was their worst trauma met lifetime criteria for PTSD. This is in comparison, for example, with a PTSD prevalence rate of 5% for those whose worst event was a natural disaster. Abstract It is fitting that a volume on post-traumatic stress includes chapters on sexual assault given both the prevalence of sexual assault and its effects. Specifically, in terms of prevalence, approximately one woman in five in the United States will be raped in her lifetime (Koss, 1993).1 In terms of the effects of sexual assault, victims experience heightened fear, anxiety, and depression for several months, and sometimes years, following an assault (see Frazier Norris, 1992; Ullman & Siegel, 1994). In a recent national study of trauma exposure and PTSD by Kessler and his colleagues (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, & Nelson, 1995), almost half of the women who said that a rape was their worst trauma met lifetime criteria for PTSD. This is in comparison, for example, with a PTSD prevalence rate of 5% for those whose worst event was a natural disaster.
Peace accords and international interventions have contributed to the suspension of armed conflict and the censuring of repressive regimes in many parts of the world. Some governments and their opposition parties have agreed to the establishment of commissions or other bodies designed to create historical records of the violations of human rights and foster conditions that facilitate reparatory and reconciliatory processes. This paper explores selected roles that community psychologists have played in this process of remembering the past and constructing new identities towards creating a more just future. With reference to two community groups (in Guatemala and South Africa) we show how efforts to "speak out" about one's own experiences of political and military repression involve complex representational politics that go beyond the simple binary opposition of silencing versus giving voice. The Guatemalan group consisted of Mayan Ixil women who, together with the first author, used participatory action research and the PhotoVoice technique to produce a book about their past and present struggles. The South African group, working within the ambit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in collaboration with the third author and others, explored ways of speaking about their roles in apartheid and post-apartheid society. Although both these initiatives can be seen as moments in on-going struggles to overcome externally-imposed repressive practices that censor the voices of marginalized communities, they also serve to dispel overly romanticized notions of "univocal" communities now liberated to express themselves in an unmediated and unequivocal fashion. The paper discusses how each group of women instead entered into subtly nuanced relationships with community psychologists involving a continual interplay between the authenticity of their self-representational accounts and the requirements of the discursive technologies into which they were being inducted and the material conditions within their sites of struggle. In both cases the group's agenda also evolved over time, so that what emerged was not so much a particular account of themselves, or even the development of a particular "voice" for speaking about themselves, but an unfolding process--for the groups and for the community psychologists who accompanied them--of becoming active players in the postmodern, mediated world of self-representational politics and social struggle.