Art Therapy as an Intervention to Mitigate the Traumatic Effects Experienced by Victims of Human-Trafficking: A Case

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.

Source: KNUST