PROJECTS AT HUG

We are now supporting a total of three projects at Geneva University Hospitals (HUG).
The year 2022 will mark a turning point in the projects we support at the HUG. With the completion of Prof. Dr. Hüppi’s research on “Accompanying the development of premature newborn babies through music” (read here), we have decided to support an art therapy project for young adults who are overweight and/or have eating disorders. The programme, run by the HUG’s therapeutic education unit, offers young participants the chance to explore their own selves and their relationship with their body, their image and society, all through art, which is used in a variety of ways depending on the themes addressed.

But it was towards the end of the year that everything gathered pace.

We first received a request from prof. Dr Rémy Barbe, head of the inpatient unit of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Service (SPEA), to ensure the continuity of the music therapy programme. This programme was set up several years ago within the SPEA and is already well integrated within the department, but without our support it could well have disappeared in 2023. It’s a great pleasure to be able to offer our support to this child psychiatry programme this spring. Creative therapies for young patients with mental health problems enable them to communicate through a non-verbal medium, without interpretation. As Dr Remy Barbe describes it:
“The dual relationship between doctor and child/adolescent psychologist can be worrying and intimidating, and it also requires the ability to put things into words, which young people with mental health problems don’t always have. This is why it is essential to set up a care framework that protects patients from overly direct contact, which can be frightening and lead them to close themselves off, which runs counter to the need to work through current difficulties. This is the role of mediated therapies, which offer an intermediary, a transitional zone between the patient and the carers. They bring new, original and creative approaches to the therapy programmes needed for children and adolescents suffering from psychological disorders. Dr Rémy Barbe, Doctor in charge of the SPEA inpatient unit.

This summer, the project will also take its place in the new Maison de l’enfance et de l’adolescence at the HUG.

Finally, at the end of 2022, the Geneva-based association À côté de toi contacted us to set up an art therapy programme in the paediatric intensive care unit at the HUG (to find out more about this partnership – click here). Every year, the intensive care unit at the HUG welcomes just over 700 hospitalised children and adolescents. The mission of paediatric intensive care units is to care for all children aged 0 to 16 who require care that is too extensive for conventional units, and who require close monitoring. They take care of a wide range of seriously ill children whose vital, respiratory or cardiac functions are impaired and who need to be closely monitored. This promising project will be accompanied by an art therapist and will begin in September 2023.

Find out more about the benefits of art therapy here.

Read testimonials here.

We are delighted to be able to support these programmes in partnership with the Fondation privée des HUG.