Performing for Adolescent Psychiatric Patients: Part 1

Working with new groups of people is one of my favorite experiences as an informal science educator.  I find it a great challenge and opportunity to teach science to groups of people I haven't worked with before, especially if I think my interaction with them can have a positive impact.  You may be surprised to learn I've performed science shows for immigrant and refugee children, grieving children, hospitalized children, the elderly, and religiously conservative groups who may distrust science.  In each one of these cases I felt their was something special I could offer, and I did my best to tailor my shows to accomplish this.

Whenever someone calls to request a traveling show, I never know where it might lead. Recently a phone call led to my first performance at a psychiatric hospital for children and adolescent patients.  Huchings Psychiatric Center helps children with a variety of mental health problems.  Their website provides informational material on Depression, Eating Disorders, Schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses.  Before going to the Center I read through all of these materials and asked the women who booked the show a number of questions about what I should expect from the young people and how my shows fit in with their schedule.  The Center wanted to celebrate the Thankgiving school break with the patients, and thought it would be fun for the students to have me visit and provide some educational entertainment.

I ended up performing a show for the younger patients and another for the adolescent patients (ages 13-18), but it is the show for the adolescents I want to write about.  I knew I would have no problem with the younger audience, but I did a lot of thinking about how I would connect to the older kids and deliver a show that would entertain, teach, and possibly help with the healing that the audience needed.  I don't perform traveling shows often for teenagers, and it always makes me nervous.  An 18 year old can ask questions that are a lot harder than a 10 year old usually can, and many times teenagers can adopt an "I'm too cool for this" attitude.  Whenever I do a show for this age group I prepare with some extra reading on the science topics and commit myself to giving an A+ performance.   Having an audience full of teenagers who were potentially cutting, attempting suicide, and starving themselves before entering the Center seemed like it could add more difficulties I couldn't plan for.  Would the patients have problems with me as an "authority figure?"   Would they be angry they were forced to live in a hospital and resent me for being a part of it?  I just couldn't know.

Thankfully, the show went great.  In fact, it was an experience I won't soon forget and I don't think the teenagers will either.  If you had observed, you would have seen an audience eagerly participating and enjoying themselves while learning about optical illusions, the science of sound and music, and meeting the museum's pet turtle, Patsie.  The experience wasn't magical and didn't resemble a Hollywood drama, but it was real.  I noticed only one of the patients seemed a bit withdrawn, but even he was interested when he saw the African hand drum I brought.  I couldn't have asked for a better audience.  I left this show feeling like I had made a positive impact on the patients' day, and maybe even on their recoveries.

If you are an educator and you get the opportunity to work with a group you've never worked with before, or whom you might be reluctant to work with, I say to just go for it.  Do what research you can beforehand, and go for it.

In this post I gave a description of the show and my thoughts leading up to it.  In Part 2 I will talk about why I think the presentation worked and what role science presentations might have in the recovery of adolescent psychiatric patients.