Nise da Silveira – Google Doodle celebrates Brazilian psychiatrist’s 115th birthday

The present Google Doodle praises a visionary Brazilian psychiatrist and a student of Carl Jung Nise da Silveira on her 115th birthday celebration.

Born on this day in 1905, in the northeastern city of Maceió in Brazil, Nise da Silveira finished her medical degree in 1926 at only 21 years of age, as the only woman in her class. After graduating from the Medical School of Bahia in 1926 (the only woman among 157 men, she devoted her life to psychiatry and never agreed with the aggressive types of treatment of her time, for example, commitment to psychiatric hospitals, electroshock, insulin therapy, and lobotomy.

At the point when Nise da Silveira started work at a national psychiatric center in 1933, she was disheartened by the harsh medicinal methodology that physicians were depending upon to treat psychological sicknesses, for example, schizophrenia.

Bravely challenging the status quo, Nise da Silveira rather started to study and advocate for more sympathetic rehabilitative treatments. She created art workshops for patients to communicate the inward operations of their minds through painting and sculpting, and she later got one of the first to join creatures into her training as “co-therapists.” Nise da Silveira’s new methodology demonstrated highly successful in her patients’ recovery, preparing for a better approach for contemplating psychiatric consideration.

Nise da Silveira’s research on occupational therapy and the comprehension of the psychotic procedure through pictures of the oblivious gave origin, along the years, to exhibitions, films, documentaries, audiovisuals, courses, symposiums, publications, and meetings. She was likewise a pioneer in researching emotional relations between patients and creatures, whom she used to call co-therapists.

Nise da Silveira’s Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente (“Images of the Unconscious Museum”) stays open right up ’til today, keeping up a collection of more than 350,000 pieces of patient-made artwork. Her work has propelled innumerable others, prompting the foundation of therapeutic institutions both in Brazil and around the globe.

One of the few women in medication in her time, Nise da Silveira strongly challenged established psychiatric practices, pioneering a more humane way to deal with patient care.

In acknowledgment of her work, Nise da Silveira was awarded decorations, titles, and prizes in various subject matters. She was an establishing individual from the International Society for Psychopathological Expression headquartered in Paris, France. Her work and thoughts inspired the creation of Museums, Cultural Centers and Therapeutic Institutions in Brazil and abroad.

Nise da Silveira died on October 30, 1999, in Rio de Janeiro. Her life and work were depicted in a 2015 Brazilian film, Nise: The Heart of Madness, directed by Roberto Berliner.