Berkeley Adult School class promotes creativity and mental wellness
Crystals Lachman, 44, of Berkeley, says the abuse she experienced during her childhood took a heavy toll on her mental health. But now, she enjoys healing and support through a course offered at Berkeley Adult School called Art and Health that combines creativity and mental wellness.
“I’ve had dissociative identity disorder and complex post-traumatic stress disorder, Lachman says. “So, I had a lot of flashbacks and nightmares, and that made it hard to function.”
Berkeley Adult School is well known for its free and low-cost courses, including its high school diploma and basic education classes, English as a Second Language instruction and its career technical programs.
Moreover, the school offers an array of personal enrichment courses aimed at older adults, as well as enrichment classes for adults living with disabilities. Those classes include adaptive sports, movement, health, vocational skills and the fine arts.
“Art helps me process things that happened to me in the past and to see where I want to go in the future.”
Crystals Lachman, Berkeley Adult School student
For Lachman, the free Art and Health class has been a kind of therapy for her and other students struggling with their mental health.
“Art helps me process things that happened to me in the past and to see where I want to go in the future,” she says.
Lachman says her instructor, Mary Macdonald, lets her and the other students try their hands at a number of creative genres, from painting and mixed media to 3-D art. She says Macdonald often starts by giving the class a prompt or idea to help inspire their individual creativity.
“What I like about this instructor is she’s very open and very kind and accepting, and she lets you be whoever you are and do what you need to do.”
“She brings in a lot of different projects, so you have a lot of choices, which is really important as a trauma survivor, to have choices,” she says.
Lachman says she especially enjoys that her instructor encourages students to express their own style in each piece. She explains that in traditional art classes, instructors typically focus on teaching a particular technique. Therefore, students’ projects tend to look the same.
“But if you walk into her classroom, you’ll see a vast array of different styles. So everybody could have the same prompt but all the pieces look completely different, because she’s good at helping each person find their own style, which I think is unique and important for people getting back to careers or back to whatever healing they need to do. Because it’s yours, it helps you to find out who you are,” Lachman says.
And, to support their mental health, the instructor encourages the art students to communicate how they feel emotionally at the start of every class, she says.
“We have a pretty extensive check in that usually takes at least an hour. Everybody has an opportunity to check in and talk about how they’re doing, and we can work on art during that process,” she says.
Lachman, who has worked as a mental health coach herself, says students can also drop in and out of the art class whenever they like. She says the arrangement worked well with her old job at a local mental health agency that gave its employees time off to care for their mental health.
Today, thanks in part to the Berkeley Adult School’s Art and Health class, Lachman says she leads a busy and productive life. She recently founded a church called Multifaceted Journeys and began selling some of her artwork online. She also co-founded a support group for clinicians with dissociative identity disorder.
“It’s a good program and a good use of your time,” she says of the art class. “All the supplies are provided. You have a lot of space to work on whatever you need to work on,” she says.
“It’s a great place to do that. You can go there and do as much or as little as you need, and it’s a good community, too.”
For more information, go to bas.berkeleyschools.net
Written by Gail Short
| Regions | Classes |
|---|---|
| Bay Area California | Enrichment |
