Reporting from Canada, #9: Transforming Guns Into Art

GreenOptix/AdobeStock

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” - Oscar Wilde

You know the old Biblical anti-war saying from the book of Isaiah: “Beat swords into plowshares.”

However, plowshares are hardly around anymore, and the transformation from swords has not happened. Instead, my wife and I recently saw another play in Stratford, Canada, titled “The Art of War.” It describes the life of a painter embedded into Canadian troops in World War II with the mandate to paint his reactions. He struggled with relevance and personal danger, among other challenges.

The story is based on the actual Canadian Forces Artists Program, still running today. I am familiar with journalists being embedded into American armed forces, but not artists. Journalists generally provide reports of what is going on, while artists provide interpretations, though there can be overlap.

Imagine what artists could provide if they were embedded safely enough in Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Russia, Myanmar, Sudan, and other war zones and humanitarian crises.

Artists embedded in mental health care have done—and still can do—something similar, although funding and the business control of medicine has dissipated its presence. Art, especially painting and music, has long been a valuable experiential and interpretive medium, especially for psychiatric patients who have difficulty doing so verbally. Patient art, like conflict-related art, can provide unique psychological information and interventions that cannot be conveyed in any other way.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.