Art therapy with military families: The animal strengths and family environment directive

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Military families are resilient but are impacted by service member’s deployments, combat exposure, injuries, and other stressors such as frequent moves. These factors affect the entire family, and in turn family dynamics influence injured service members’ capacity to heal. Art therapy is a regulated mental health profession that incorporates the use of visual art to address psychological and rehabilitation treatment goals provided by qualified art therapists and has been used with military families in health settings for over 70 years. Through art therapy, military families can find new ways to communicate with one another in developmentally appropriate ways. This article describes the process of the Animal Strengths and Family Environment (ASFE), an art therapy directive designed to meet the needs of families of service members recovering from effects of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Case vignettes are presented illustrating the use of the ASFE, describing how two military families identified character strengths through animal metaphors, and created visual artwork to discover and express these strengths, roles, and needs. The authors contend that this process is useful in mapping family dynamics to increase communication which ultimately fosters family resiliency. Continued research is needed to better understand possible outcomes of art therapy directives with military families.