Art Therapy as an Intervention to Mitigate the Traumatic Effects Experienced by Victims of Human-Trafficking: A Case
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2017-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
KNUST
Abstract
Human trafficking is a crime that has become a notorious phenomenon and iconic for
contemporary slavery. It is premised on life distortions caused by wars, frequent
interferences in democratic governance by the armed forces and natural disasters affecting
the supply of essential commodities for which reason, many people suffer deprivation.
This development creates opportunity for criminal gangs to exploit the vulnerable
especially, women and children. In spite of the stringent laws at both national and
international levels aimed at preventing the crime, several media reportages in Ghana
revealed intermittent rescuing of human trafficked victims by the Ghana Police Service and
some NGOs. The aims of the study were to identify and describe the causes of human
trafficking in Ghana and their types and also to examine the existing social interventions
available for victims of human trafficking and their effectiveness in dealing with the
trauma associated with human trafficking. Additionally, the study aimed to determine how
Art Therapy can be used to assist victims to recover from their trauma, since preliminary
investigation indicated that these rescued victims exhibit series of traumatic dispositions at
the police stations due to the trauma they suffer. The Qualitative and quantitative research
designs were adopted to collect data on human trafficking. Case Study, Phenomenological
Study, approaches were used together with interview, observation and questionnaire as
instruments to determine trauma and its effects on these rescued victims. Whereas,
purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to select the population for the
study. Content Analysis was also adopted to review the available social interventions and
their effectiveness to deal with trauma of victims; whereas, Art Therapy was used to
induce non-verbal communication of these voiceless, emotionally buttered and traumatised
victims through drawing sessions and the artworks produced revealed the instabilities
suffered in their emotional world. Through directed and non-directed themes in drawing,
victims were observed to consistently, get releases as they shred various levels of traumatic
dispositions and were healed emotionally and their attitudes resumed normal functioning.
Art Therapy was identified to be effective in mitigating trauma of human trafficked
victims. Their growth of healing was demonstrated through their artworks. Efficacy of Art
Therapy in healing buttered emotions was revealed as these human trafficking victims
were observed to regain their lost-selves and identity, which enabled their successful
v
reintegration. The methodologies applied facilitated the identification of causes and types
of human trafficking prevalent in Ghana. Also the social interventions available for victims
and limitations to their effectiveness in dealing with trauma associated with human
trafficking were identified. The study has established Art Therapy as an effective
intervention in healing the remote stressors that resulted into emotional instability of
human trafficked victims. Further, the study outcomes indicated that Poverty, Religious
Issues, Gender Roles and Abusive Parents were the major causes of human trafficking in
Ghana. The study also revealed that the Social Protection division of the Ministry of
Gender, Children and Social Protection was under resourced in terms of human and
logistics so could not effectively perform its mandated duty of offering professional
counselling services leading to reintegration as required by laws. The use of Art Therapy
was identified to be effective, cost effective and a timely intervention in dealing with
trauma experienced by human trafficking victims and it was observed to have multi utility
effects in addressing trauma. For this effectiveness, cogent and logical conclusions and
recommendations were made to the Government of Ghana and, the Ministry of Gender,
Children and Social Protection to incorporate Art Therapy as a complementary
intervention to counselling services so as to accelerate the healing process of human
trafficked victims to normal functioning. The Government of Ghana was encouraged to
recruit Art Therapists to offer services to victims.
Description
A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Educational Innovations in Science and Technology, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in Partial Fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ART EDUCATION