Teddy bears are natural tools to heal all kinds of mental health problems. As a licensed clinical social worker, I have spent many years teaching professionals how to organize these cute and engaging toys into a pattern that can be very effective in gathering information remarkably quickly in a treatment session. I have heard stories of the benefits of sleeping with a teddy bear, of giving teddy bears to trauma victims, and of Holocaust survivors holding on to teddy bears as a supportive lifeline. The teddy bear, despite more than a hundred years since its origin, is still viewed as a single object, and little research has been done to demonstrate its efficacy organized into a model for healing grief and loss beyond simply holding on. to the bear The teddy bear originated around the same time as psychology, but the teddy bear was developed as a children’s toy, while psychology originated as a method to heal the minds of wealthy middle-aged women. Psychology has expanded over the years and is now considered a method for working with people of all ages, groups, classes, and income groups.
The teddy bear has continued to be seen as a unique object to be held and grasped by children. Teddy Bear Therapy as a model has remained stagnant. Other than describing the benefits of holding a teddy bear, naming it, and talking to the teddy bear to comfort it, it has been overlooked as a model for assessments and interventions, or as a model for adult play therapy. In fact, it hasn’t even been seen as a model, it’s been seen as an individual object. An evidence-based model of teddy bear application at a community mental health center in Georgia has been developed. This model shows tips and tools from social work, marriage and family counseling, and psychology for working with people of all ages, races, and socioeconomic groups. The model is interactive and extends clinical training from viewing the teddy bear as a single object to viewing teddy bears as a model that goes beyond simply naming the bear and projecting it onto it, to a tool that can provide physicians with objective methods of measuring subjective thoughts and feelings.
Over seven years of applying this model with adults who abuse substances, adults released from prison, adults and children who have been sexually abused, and with women who have lost their children to social services, just to repeating generational patterns, has demonstrated the powerful and rapid method that model-organized teddy bears can have for creating rapid change. The benefits of modeling teddy bears to identify problems, heal grief and loss, and demonstrate measurable results are enormous. The biggest benefit is the speed with which this model can bring about change with adults and children of both sexes.
