Social and psychological aspects of environment-based health risk assessment

Abstract

The authors are mainly focused on special features of using art-therapeutic techniques to facilitate adaptation of several categories of the population to the information about environment- based health risks. They consider the methodological issues of presenting the ideas about health risks within the medical ecological content, of informing about those risks, since the lack of attention to those issues leads to additional anxiety in the population, as well as methods of correction of the latter through art-therapy methods developed by the authors. A psychological support program is suggested, which consists of three stages: diagnostic, psychological correction, psychological and social support. The first stage suggests psychological diagnostics, which include methods that allow for psychological and emotional background
assessment. Based on the results of the diagnostics and social data, a complex assessment is made about the main problems of a person and a decision is made about the participation in psychological correction, which consists of individual and groups sessions. The second stage is aimed at the correction of negative emotions and feelings, as well as reaching solutions that are more complex. Art-therapy is suggested as the main psychosocial correction method, the use of which can create safe art-therapeutic environment, where the main means of interaction is a constructive dialogue, based on creating and examining an art product of a client, ‘clientart product-psychologist’, where the client feels protected enough to express their feelings. At the third stage, the clients continue to work with the psychologist as part of the psychological social support, the essence of which is given in this article as well.

Keywords:

quality of human life, health risk, population environment, art-therapy methods, anxiety, visual arts therapy, play therapy