To get through Hodgkin’s Disease, Communication junior Jason Nellis drew pictures during his treatment. Nellis, who was diagnosed with the cancer in 2003, said the drawings gave him self-awareness.

“It’s one way to allow the subconscious to just process the feelings that are happening,” he said.

Drawing and making mosaics are part of Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Expressive Arts Therapy Program, which works to help cancer patients deal with the emotional aspects of their illness, said Director Nancy Nainis. The hospital also has Recreational Therapy Program with a similar goal, said Director Jillian Miller. Both therapists treat between 10 and 20 people in small groups each day.

Therapy is integral in the healing process, said Miller and Nainis, and several NU students who have witnessed cancer in their own families agreed.

Miller and volunteers at the hospital give patients massages and try to re-create patients’ lives in the hospital, Miller said. Patients who worked regularly before they were diagnosed can work on computers, and people who exercised avidly can participate in a walking game, she said.

Nainis has her patients tear pieces of paper for mosaics, wrap yarn around sticks and use coloring books.

These activities can help calm patients, she said. Through coloring, patients can choose colors that best express their feelings, Nainis said black and red represent anger, and blue and green symbolize peace.

Art therapy lets patients articulate emotions they may not be able to talk about and gives them a sense of control when they can’t control their disease or treatment, she said.

“There’s a lot of sense of loss. We can give them something that they’re in charge of,” Nainis said.

Students also stressed the benefits of these therapies.

“It’s definitely helpful for anyone who’s in the hospital for a long time,” said Erin Kirkham, 23, a Parkinson’s Disease researcher at NU who volunteers at the hospital. “They’re removed from their life. It’s helpful for them to have some expression of who they are aside from just a sick person.”

Kirkham gives 15-minute hand massages to about eight patients every night in the hospital. This form of recreational therapy allows patients to relax and forget about their pain, she said.

Education sophomore Lauren Przyborowski, whose grandmother died from cancer, said emotional healing can lead to physical healing.

“The mind is really powerful, and the more that someone can express their feelings and understand how they’re feeling about it, once they get control of that, they can get control of the more physical aspects,” she said.

McCormick sophomore Nicholas Graham, who had five family members die from cancer, said the therapies can improve patients’ moods.

“Life is about being happy, and you got to try to do things that will allow you to be as content as you were before you got your condition,” he said.

Nainis researched the effectiveness of art therapy after the hospital hired her and Miller in 2002. She had patients rate their pain and anxiety before and after treatment, and most patients reported their symptoms had been reduced, she said.

Miller had patients rank their pain levels. Many patients indicated that their pain levels went down after treatment, she said.

She emphasized the normalcy she strives to bring to her patients’ lives. Instead of walking around their hospital unit many times, patients play a game with a pedometer and navigate around the unit as if they were walking around Chicago, Miller said. Golfers can engage in a version of the sport specially adapted for them, she said.

Nainis said the majority of her patients are being treated for cancer, but she has treated patients with severe pain and others with childhood trauma.

Director of Clinical Training and Psychology Prof. Susan Mineka doubted the therapies could be used to treat generalized anxiety, but said she was not prepared to comment on their effectiveness for cancer patients.

Nainis, Miller and some NU students said the therapies are valuable, but that they must be used in conjunction with traditional medicine. Medicine and therapy are complementary, they said.

“There are two types of recovery: physical and emotional,” Graham said. “You can’t have one without the other.”

Reach Lauren Pond at [email protected].