Pathways to Healing: Expressive Arts Practice with Adolescent Refugees

Adolescent refugees including both accompanied and unaccompanied minors, face a unique set of challenges that make them particularly vulnerable. They bear the ‘double burden’ of forced displacement from their homeland and the transition from childhood to adulthood. This chapter presents a structured yet flexible approach to therapeutic expressive arts work with adolescent refugees, drawing from Herman’s (1992) trauma healing framework and Jalonen and Cilia La Corte’s (2017) practical guide to therapeutic work with refugees as well as the author’s expressive arts practice. The approach incorporates elements of safety, stabilisation, the processing and integration of traumatic experiences and identity development, into distinct yet permeable stages that align with the roles of different professionals. The stages reflect key principles from these frameworks, emphasising cultural sensitivity, adaptability and the non-linear nature of healing. Importantly, each intervention is carefully aligned with the cognitive, emotional and social developmental stages of adolescence, ensuring effective age-appropriate support.

The following sections outline these stages, distinguishing between those that can be implemented by health professionals and those requiring the expertise of psychological therapy professionals. This distinction ensures that each professional group operates within its specific scope of practice. Throughout these stages, the integration of expressive arts plays a crucial role in facilitating healing and communication. To illustrate this approach in practice, the latter part of the chapter presents a case study of Axmed, an unaccompanied minor refugee from Africa who claimed asylum in Ireland. This case study serves as a practical example, demonstrating how expressive arts techniques are applied within this therapeutic framework.