Breaking Barriers with Animation: A Universal Tool for Mental Health Education

Animation as a Healing Medium

The effectiveness of animation as an art therapy tool for the facilitation of emotional healing and improving psychological health has been realized. Its peculiar qualities make it especially suited for trauma.

• Safe exploration: Animation provides a safe medium through which to explore and work through traumatic experiences without reliving one's tragedy.
• Expressing complex emotions: It can convey complex emotions and experiences in an accessible and soft manner.
• Visualization and detachment: Being able to see animated characters work through their traumatic experiences enables one to gain some insight into one's processes while keeping an emotional distance from them.
• Agency and control: Animations can show how to deal with trauma; this can be used by viewers to gain increased agency and empowerment.

Scientific Basis

A number of studies and reviews explain why animation is useful in therapy:

• Understanding is improved: Strong evidence exists that graphics and animations improve learning and the retention of knowledge about health care interventions.
• Overcoming obstacles: Animations can transcend linguistic barriers and also allow education in people who are not able to read and write very much.
• Better learning: In a meta-analysis of controlled trials, the evidence indicated that animations are superior in enhancing learning-conceptual understanding and in enhancing procedural skills-compared to control groups using static pictures.
• Positive effects: In a systematic review of 38 studies, consistent positive effects of animations on knowledge were identified, especially compared to standard care or verbal information.

Animation as an Art Form

Animation, therefore, is very much an art form:

• Multidisciplinary medium: The medium of animation combines concepts of narrative, play, and digital art therapies.
• Expressive artwork: It offers the chance to participants to create expressive pieces, which deal with the emotional issues of suffering, loss, trauma, and sorrow.
• Creative expression: Animation therapy is based upon the now well-identified positive relationship between health and creative expression.

In essence, this means that scientific sources strongly support the application of animation as a therapeutic tool in educating and treating trauma. It serves to explain even the most complex information as a highly effective medium and also as a highly respected art that may be used in the application of healing and self-expression. Current research and practices in the field of mental health beautifully support the creation of animated psychoeducational films on trauma.