Anime in Therapy

Story Time!

How I started using anime in therapy...

Back in 2018, I started working as the Art Therapist at a local Residential facility working with adolescents. In my first few months working there, I started realizing that there were a few kids who were super into anime. So, being the weeb I am, I was very excited to watch anime with them and chat about what we saw.

This started with a few different individual clients. We would watch whatever we could get for free on YouTube or Funimation: My Hero Academia, Soul Eater, Dragonball Z and Super...

We would talk about themes from the anime and, sometimes, how it applied to their lives or whatever they were going through at the time. It also became a safe way for the youth to express thoughts or feelings about themselves and the people around them by assigning characters to themselves and others. We got some great laughs from this. But it brought to light vulnerabilities, things the kids liked about themselves, and even aspects about people who, despite vehemently expressing frustration toward, they actually liked and respected.

Side tangent: I was working with an adolescent and we were watching My Hero Academia. The client decided to assign the characters and teachers to people in their life. They assigned the primary therapist as Principal Nezu, comparing the therapist first to a mouse (hahaha) but then going on to say how Principal Nezu is super strong, knowledgeable, and supportive of the students and teachers. This individual never let on any positive thoughts or feelings toward their primary therapist until this moment but clearly had respect for him. Of course, the youth never had another nice thing to say about him either...

Over time, the number of kids interested in watching anime and talking about it increased across the campus. I spoke with my manager at the time who encouraged me to do the research and build a curriculum to test out with a select few kids. So I did.

I found an article about anime in therapy, reached out to the author who invited me to a webinar he was facilitating the next month, and he introduced me to Geek Therapy.

Let me say, finding a whole community of other therapists who see the benefit of using nerd culture in therapy was SO VALIDATING.

Back to the story. I made the curriculum, introduced the group and it EXPLODED. I altered it over a few years, finding what worked best with different groups - should I pick the anime, do I open up options/suggestions from the group, do I introduce specific art directives or let them do whatever during the show, etc.

Example of an Art Directive: Create a Bookmark and practice taking a Pause

It eventually got to the point that I was having 2 anime groups to handle the increased interest and to manage different age groups and levels of functioning for different shows and conversations.

This group became a year-round staple group.

I even made a list of "dorm approved" anime that the youth could watch in their dorms with staff that would be age and developmentally appropriate for the groups. Anime group went from 2-3 kids across a 76 kid campus to entire 10+ person dorms watching anime together and talking about the themes.

When I left the Residential and moved to full-time Private Practice, my two remaining interns stepped up and took over the anime group, using the foundation set to introduce their own spin and theoretical views on anime in therapy.

I love looking back and thinking about the groups I've had and the fun conversations and epiphanies clients and I have had by watching anime.

Another example art directive: Perler Bead Evee