Giving thanks by giving back

November 21, 2018
Katie Hinson
Katie Hinson, Arts in Healing program coordinator, at an easel in the MUSC Children's Health Atrium. Photo by Sarah Pack

With butterflies in her stomach, Katie Hinson pressed the button to the 7th floor of the Children’s Hospital, bound for the Atrium. She’d been there many times before. She opened the door, and for a moment, it felt like time stood still. Her eyes went straight to a small wooden easel that looked strikingly like the one she painted on when she was 5 and a patient at MUSC’s Children’s Hospital. That was 28 years ago, and still the feeling was overwhelming. 

In many ways, she’d come full circle. This was her first day on the new job. Her charge? To design MUSC’s first healing arts program using creative arts therapies. Board certified and registered psychotherapists use art, music, dance, drama, poetry, even horticulture to promote healing and self-understanding and encourage patients to express themselves nonverbally. 

There is symmetry to Hinson’s story. A quiet child, she was artistic and energetic. Her mom, an artist, filled the home with paints, brushes, markers and canvases and encouraged Hinson to have fun expressing herself. So at age 5, when the term open-heart surgery had no meaning to her, art helped her make sense of what she was going through. And the first moment she could sit up after surgery? She made her way to an easel. 

Nurses would cart her off to the Atrium, an area in the Children’s Hospital designed for play, activities and fun, in an old-fashioned red wagon, she said, so she could draw. “Those were my wheels,” she laughed.

a child's drawing of a person
A drawing Katie Hinson made as a child. Photo provided

“I kept drawing pictures of figures with a lot of stuff around the chest and body area. I was trying to process what was going on with me by drawing what I felt, because I didn’t have the words. All I knew is something scary was happening, but I had no idea what.” 

She remembers a lot about that ordeal. Her parents were right by her side and kept all the artwork she created during the stressful time. 

Growing up, she realized art in medicine fascinated her. It even brought her back to MUSC Health; this time as a volunteer. Through her high school years, she spent time knee deep in art projects. 

At 16, with her driver’s license still hot in her hands, she drove herself every week from Goose Creek to the peninsula to volunteer at the Children’s Hospital and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She held babies. She encouraged breastfeeding mothers. She loved talking to the moms and doing art with the kids. Art and healing were in her blood, and these formative experiences would fuel her passion and drive her educational and professional paths – some that would literally put her life in danger. 

Doubling down

At the College of Charleston, Hinson studied art and psychology. After graduation, she loaded a U-Haul and moved herself to New York City to pursue a master’s in art therapy. What she found was a large community of creative arts therapists there. After the program she stayed, and as an alumna, she supervised students, bringing them to clinical settings around the city.

“I took them to the VA to work with patients suffering from PTSD, multiple nonprofits working with cancer survivors, an LGBTQI outpatient program and a few hospitals throughout the city, teaching them how to use art therapy with different populations in various settings. It was an amazing opportunity for them to choose what populations they wanted to focus on. That’s important, because working with patients struggling with PTSD is completely different from working with a child on the autism spectrum.”

At that time, she was with the Art Therapy Project, a nonprofit that helped organizations with people who had experienced some sort of trauma. Specifically, she worked with young men 21 to 23 years old just released from Rikers Island – New York City's main jail complex situated on an island adjacent to LaGuardia Airport. They were in a step-down program after incarceration to get them back on track. 

“I was doing art therapy with this group of young men. I fell in love with it. They’d had really rough lives and were gang involved. They felt like kids that just needed a little love, and art was a really great tool to process what was going on.”  

That job led to an interesting opportunity. A supervisor contacted Hinson about an opening for a creative arts therapist at Rikers. While she’d always vowed she would never work there, considering, she said, it was the scariest place on the planet, she interviewed, and they offered her the job. 

“The inmates just needed so much; I couldn’t say no,” she said. “So I did that full-time for three years. I went to jail every day for three years.” 

Some days, she feared for her life. After all, Rikers is one of the most violent jails in the country, she said. While there are things she still can’t talk about, her patients made it worthwhile. They were very protective of her and on occasion would call to warn her not to come, if they knew if something was about to happen. 

She worked with the 16 and 17 year olds. “The worst thing was New York and North Carolina were the only two states in the country that were incarcerating kids under 18, no matter what they were accused of doing.” The case of Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old kid from the Bronx who authorities accused of stealing a backpack on the subway, still haunts her. “He was so traumatized after his release that he committed suicide. Today, 16 and 17 year olds are no longer incarcerated at Rikers. Thankfully.” 

She would take a huge bag of art materials into the cellblocks and to their “house.” Cells lined three walls, and in the middle were metal tables bolted to ground. “I’d come through the first gates, and I would hear them start yelling, ‘It’s art therapy. Katie’s here.’” 

They would be waiting for her at the tables. They would all sit together in the middle of their house and create artwork around their stories, because it was sometimes unsafe to talk about what they had done, what happened to them or what kind of trauma they were experiencing in jail, she explained. 

“Some people drew it. Some wrote it. It was just a beautiful way to process what was going on with them in a safe way. I kept all their artwork with me, so it was safe. I built a therapeutic relationship with them – rapport was important. It shows that the trust built through art therapy can benefit anyone. A human is a human no matter what they’re going through.” 

And after a decade in the Big Apple, three years spent at Rikers, the spunky art therapist from Charleston had earned her chops in one very tough place. It was time to be back in Charleston with family.

Next stop, MUSC Health 

The Arts in Healing Program was the brainchild of Patrick Cawley, M.D., CEO of MUSC Health and University vice president of Health Affairs. He has long believed the arts and healing are closely tied, and integrating creative arts therapies into health care is vital. A trip to the Cleveland Clinic reinforced that philosophy. An enormous tree projected on a wall captivated him. 

a young girl smiles as she look up from her art easel
Katie Hinson as a child. Photo provided

The projection art installation was very meaningful to him,” Hinson recounted. “Dr. Cawley is always on the move, but that tree stopped him in his tracks. It’s interactive, so patients and visitors can be enveloped by its movement and changing colors. He shared with me that he stood there for several minutes just taking it in.” 

He returned to MUSC ready to make headway. Heart and vision coupled with credentials and experience were just the combination Cawley was looking for in a program coordinator, and Hinson hit on all cylinders. “This program is Dr. Cawley’s innovation. He’s our No. 1 supporter,” she said of his support and encouragement. I’m also grateful to the arts in health care committee for their energy and vision in creating a path for this program.”  

As much a science as an art, research has shown that creative arts therapy programs help patients and families cope with their hospitalizations and diseases and reduce pain, fear and anxiety. “Many patients are struggling with pain,” Hinson said. For instance, the therapists work with children and adults at the sickle cell clinic, building new coping skills and working to reduce pain levels through purposeful art interventions. 

In addition to training in the arts, creative arts therapies requires analytical expertise. Art therapists are able to assess artwork to look for developmental and/or psychological issues. 

Doctors refer patients to the creative arts therapists who consult with the patient, decide on a course of therapy and build treatment goals. The possibilities of who could benefit are endless. The therapists work with patients who are depressed or not taking their diagnoses well. They deal with bereavement and end-of-life issues. They do legacy work with patients, using art and music to have something to give the patient’s family when they are no longer together. “People all have a story to tell,” Hinson said. 

There are numerous ways to integrate the healing arts into the day-to-day care of patients. Hinson has developed three components of the program to date with ambitious plans to expand: 

  • Creative arts therapies services provide a therapeutic approach to helping patients while they’re in the hospital.  Using art materials and music as tools, board certified and registered creative arts therapists improve the patients’ health and well-being.

  • Healing arts services such as “Arts in Healing” volunteers, artists in residence and visiting artists transform MUSC lobbies, waiting rooms and clinical spaces through their performances and active art making. MUSC Health becomes the stage for artists to inspire and educate patients.

  • Curation and design elements focus on exhibitions and artwork. Studies show that when a hospital is attentive to aesthetics, it reduces stress and anxiety, promotes health and healing and improves patient and employee safety, which all serve to emphasize caring for the whole patient and creating a healing environment.

She’s also working on collaborative efforts at MUSC. One involves Lisa Kerr, Ph.D., in the Department of Humanities; Cynthia Dodds, Ph.D., PT, in the College of Health Professions; and the Gibbes Museum in an effort to involve MUSC students in the arts. Art aids in building compassion and observation skills, Hinson explained.   

Currently, the program has two art therapists and one music therapist. Hinson said she is looking to incorporate drama, poetry and horticulture into the Arts in Healing program, as soon as the program raises the funds.  

She gets positive feedback from families and care team members telling her how art and music therapists are affecting patients. “They tell me this work is impactful, and is helping. I almost always hear, ‘Can we have more?’”  

She gets it. It would have been nice if there had been someone to help her explain her feelings. “When I was having open-heart surgery as a child, I would have loved to have had a creative arts therapist sitting next me to help me verbalize what I was drawing.”