Lara Haagen is an art therapist at Eagleville Hospital and serves as Eagleville’s Adjunctive Therapies Clinical Coordinator, overseeing everything from the gardening program to a music appreciation group.

We asked Lara to describe her work and explain how art is uniquely helpful to people in recovery.

Substance use, mental health, and co-occurring disorders are complex diseases, and no two people facing them are exactly alike. That’s why Eagleville provides an evidence-based education program to provide clients with the life skills and information they need—wherever they are in their journey

They enter the art studio, collect their tools—brushes, acrylic paints—and settle in front of their canvases. Besides the soft swish of brushstrokes and the hum of the overhead lighting, the room is quiet. Each artist has slipped into their own world

Therapist Charles Clark plays a key role in helping people successfully transition from Eagleville Hospital back to the community. He also works with the Family Seminar, an education program designed to inform patients’ family members about addiction and recovery.

Almost from her first memory, Veronica Slack’s life was in total upheaval. Abused by her mother, abused and molested by an older brother, she started drinking at five. “My mother made me her drinking buddy. She gave me alcohol and took me to bars with her while my brothers and sisters were at school,” she says. “I remember I liked the pretty shapes of the bottles and the vibrant colors of the drinks with the little red straws.”

It should come as no surprise that the same is true of music we make ourselves with our instruments, our hands, our voices. Performing music in treatment is less common than using pre-recorded music, but it’s believed to offer similar benefits for individuals facing mental health and substance use disorders. For instance, playing an instrument or singing can decrease stress and anxiety and improve self-image, self-esteem, and self-expression.

It’s been long understood that humans respond deeply to music. Hearing a song can reach primitive areas of the human brain that aren’t accessible through words alone and even impact our motor and nervous systems.

It should come as no surprise that the same is true of music we make ourselves with our instruments, our hands, our voices. Performing music in treatment is less common than using pre-recorded music, but it’s believed to offer similar benefits for individuals facing mental health and substance use disorders. For instance, playing an instrument or singing can decrease stress and anxiety and improve self-image, self-esteem, and self-expression.

Even if you can’t tell right away, listening to music—a jingle, a lullaby, a ballad—has a profound impact on the brain.

That may not be accidental. Many historians believe that prehistoric music—usually created just with the voice—allowed our distant ancestors to “talk” before language was invented. Communication led to cooperation, and cooperation to tribes and societies.

Humans have long understood nature’s therapeutic effects on our mental and emotional health. As early as the 19th century, gardening has been used as a treatment for people with mental health difficulties.
In recent years, gardening programs have sprouted up in addiction and mental health treatment facilities all around the world. The treatment has also been studied under a variety of names, including ecotherapy, green therapy, nature-assisted therapy, and horticultural therapy.

Using medication to treat opioid addiction is nothing new. Since the late 1960s, addiction specialists have offered medications to patients who are physiologically dependent on opioids.

This treatment approach is called medication-assisted therapy, or MAT. The goal of MAT is to keep someone who is addicted to opioids from continuing to use heroin, narcotics, or other drugs by managing withdrawal and cravings.

Mike Denczi remembers not fitting in as a child. A self-described “red-headed, freckle-faced, slightly overweight kid,” his one outlet was sports. Then drugs and alcohol beckoned at age 13, and by high school he was getting high every day.
“By high school my life revolved around getting high,” he says. “I managed to graduate in a decent spot in my class, and I played sports throughout high school. I stayed out of trouble, so there were no consequences for my behavior. I kept doing it.”