Deans' stroke musings: Fight like a ferret: a novel approach of using art therapy to reduce anxiety in stroke patients undergoing hospital rehabilitation

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Fight like a ferret: a novel approach of using art therapy to reduce anxiety in stroke patients undergoing hospital rehabilitation

Ahhh, the stupidity of stroke researchers in full display. You wouldn't need to try art therapy if you had reduced the dead and dying neurons by stopping the neuronal cascade of death. And if you knew how to repeat neuroplasticity your patients wouldn't be so damned anxious about not recovering. Solve the correct problem and the secondary problems won't occur. Rub a couple of your neurons together, maybe you'll become smarter. In the meantime stay away from stroke patients, you are not helping.
http://mh.bmj.com/content/early/2014/01/15/medhum-2013-010448.abstract

Med Humanities doi:10.1136/medhum-2013-010448

Original article

+ Author Affiliations

¹Academic Department of Geriatrics, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, West Sussex, UK
²School of Art, Media and Design, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK
³School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

Correspondence to Dr Khalid Ali, Academic Department of Geriatrics, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Audrey Emerton Building, Eastern Road, Brighton BN2 5BE, UK; kmali@btopenworld.com, khalid.ali@bsuh.nhs.uk

Accepted 21 December 2013
Published Online First 15 January 2014

Abstract

Rationale The holistic aspect of stroke rehabilitation to include psychological well-being is currently neglected, with more emphasis placed on physical recovery despite anxiety and depression being common poststroke. From the limited amount of current literature, it seems that creative strategies such as art therapy (AT) can be beneficial in reducing isolation and anxiety among stroke patients.

Methods Stroke patients (able to consent) in a hospital rehabilitation unit were invited to participate in two weekly AT sessions for 6 weeks, facilitated by an art psychotherapist using paints, crayons, clay, a camera and an iPad. Hospital anxiety and depression scales (HAD) and therapy outcome measures (TOM) were measured at the beginning and end of the study.

Results Six male patients were recruited, average age 69 years (38–85). Group discussions allowed patients to express openly feelings of frustration as well as hope for physical and emotional recovery: ‘fight like a ferret’, an expression used by a group member. The group produced several art objects and photographic images that were collated using stop-frame animation to produce a 10 min film. Median HAD score for the group was eight points upon entering the study and six points on finishing the study.

Key conclusions There is little attention to the emotional needs of stroke patients in rehabilitation. Properly designed research studies exploring the role of AT in addressing anxiety and depression poststroke are needed. Our study showed that AT was a feasible intervention that helped patients explore the sequel of stroke in an open supportive environment.