When art helps to heal: Yuliia Taranenko among the graduates of the “Art therapy for ukraine” course

Head of the Department of Choreography and Fitness at Berdyansk State Pedagogical University, Associate Professor Yuliia Taranenko, has successfully completed the fundamental educational course “Art Therapy for Ukraine,” which lasted for six months. The program combined lectures, supervision and reflective practices, as well as independent study time, including both in-person sessions in Lviv and online meetings via Zoom.

The course was organized by the Federation “Global Initiative on Psychiatry,” the Center for Mental Health of Veterans and Their Families at the Institute of Psychiatry of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and the National Institute of Mental Health of the Czech Republic.

The training sessions were led by renowned international experts — psychotherapist and art therapist Tijs de Moor, art therapist and lecturer Marcela Andrade del Corro, mental health expert Rob Keukens, as well as professors Jana Javakhishvili and Nino Makhashvili.

During the certificate award ceremony, the program participants received as a gift the book by Janice Lobban “Art Therapy for Military Veterans: Trauma and the Image” — an important publication that deepens understanding of therapeutic approaches to working with trauma.

“For me, this is an invaluable experience. It is an international cooperation program uniting Ukraine, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Georgia, and the United Kingdom. The speakers, participants, organizers, and interpreters formed an incredible team. I am glad I passed the selection and joined this course. Is this the beginning? No, rather a continuation of the journey. And there is still much ahead,” — shares her impressions Yuliia Taranenko.

The participation of a representative of the Department of Choreography and Fitness of Berdyansk State Pedagogical University in such a large-scale international program once again highlights the university’s active integration into the modern global educational and cultural space, as well as the powerful synergy between art and psychotherapy as a means of human support.

Based on materials from the Department of Choreography and Fitness