art therapy

art therapy

The Healing Power of Art: Exploring the Impact and Benefits of Art Therapy

1. Introduction to Art Therapy

There are also other definitions of art therapy. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), art therapy is using forms of visual representations that resonate with the experience, inner life, feelings, and imagination of individuals, including drawing, painting, sculpture, and other forms of ‘art making’. In addition, the British Association of Art Therapists states that art therapy involves the application of the visual arts and is a blend of studio art and therapies such as psychotherapy, improving creativity and emotional intelligence, providing a holistic approach. Today, art therapy is recognized for its efficacy in treating a variety of disorders when used in conjunction with other psychotherapeutic techniques.

Art therapy is a form of therapy that uses art media as its primary mode of expression and communication. Within this context, art is not used as a diagnostic tool but as a medium to address emotional issues which may be confusing and distressing. Art is also used to help individuals who experience physical, emotional, and mental challenges. According to the American Art Therapy Association, art therapy is a mental health profession in which the process of making and creating artwork is used to “explore feelings, reconcile emotional conflicts, foster self-awareness, manage behavior and addictions, develop social skills, improve reality orientation, reduce anxiety, and increase self-esteem.”

2. The Psychological and Emotional Benefits of Art Therapy

The psychological and emotional benefits of art therapy can be quite vast. While some question whether the act of making art has a healing effect, the number of individuals turning to art therapy continues to grow, which leads one to believe that there must be a sizable amount of psychological benefits of doing so. In the case of families, it allows members of the family to process emotions in a safe environment while enjoying an activity that everyone can participate in – regardless of age, personality, and interests. Some emotional effects include an increase in self-esteem, self-discovery, and personal insights, enhanced interpersonal relationships, improved social skills, assisting problem-solving skills, helping express repressed emotions, dealing with grief, guilt, fear, and reconciliation of emotional conflicts. The psychological and emotional benefits make a comfortable environment for the recipient to express thoughts that are embarrassing and socially oriented. It provides a means of communication with the therapist that is more accessible to the individuals; visual symbols are seen as less threatening than verbal, confrontational, and negative aspects of communication.

3. The Role of Creativity in Healing and Self-Expression

In illness, emotional, behavioral, and developmental symptoms, and trauma, play therapy or art therapy can help. Such therapies can involve group work, family work, or individual work and can be accompanied by an art therapist, or artist or a therapist underneath for art therapy sessions. Such therapies focus on promoting healthy growth and normal maturity. Art and therapeutic approaches shield these kids while undergoing difficult treatments. Art and therapy assist patients facing life-threatening conditions. Persistent pain and cancer are obvious conditions for which relaxation and relief are generally recommended. Art and therapeutic treatment can assist through various types of discomfort. While producing or viewing art, cortisol levels are decreased. This relaxation results when the autonomic nervous system returns to neutral after an initial relaxation reaction, soothing panic, fearfulness, and the stage of agitation.

Research in the field states that art therapists are experts at interpreting images as a means of supporting processing and exploration of psychological disturbances. And while it is true that the creation of art can lead to the discovery of unconscious thought and helps to unlock and sort of ‘inner knowing’, the artist must do more than use a therapeutic approach. The healing power of art relies on the artist’s ability to create while also using specific strategies for healing the self for a particular diagnosis or psychological condition through learned therapeutic techniques. With or without art therapy training, some individuals, while completing a picture, report more self-awareness. Even children or novice adult artists report ‘just knowing’ something while working on a picture. Art can be used to correct misprints in the brain.

4. Different Approaches and Techniques in Art Therapy

In recent years, counselors have used art installations to help communicate with clients themselves. Art therapy treatment can be used with a wide variety of populations: children, adolescents, adults, population in secure settings, on a one-to-one basis with offenders, group treatment, or the whole community. It is designed to encourage low self-esteem, support positive change, faith, self-confidence, and self-awareness and also to assist people to contend with distressing emotions by expressing implicit verbal free meanings through the sensory experiences of their artwork. The interventions used within the art therapy are goal directed in order to successfully utilize art interventions in clinical settings; these are known as effective interventions. The common interventions are in ideal treatment and craft interventions.

Art therapy stands on the much broader ground of humanistic and holistic psychotherapy. It is considered as the best therapy model since human beings are not just talking, but also expressing and communicating using the universal language of visual art. Usually, art therapy was applied to subjects with serious mental disorders, but recognizing the benefits of visual expression, body-map work, digital picture-based life story review (DPBLR®) techniques, open studio model, drama therapy, psychodrama, and biblio/poetry therapy models were applied to various populations struggling with different issues such as young people living in dysfunctional families or experiencing anxiety, veterans in prisons, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), people living with HIV, cancer patients, prisoners, young people who have been trafficked, combat stress and alcoholism disorders, elders and caregivers, unhappy marriages, and people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc. The theoretical and methodological perspectives of art therapy and related models each are greatly diversified.

5. Case Studies and Real-Life Applications of Art Therapy

The power of the art is multifaceted, showing Sarah the solution others have seen on her behalf, and allowing Sarah to relate to herself which recognized her history, knowledge, experience, and fears. Art therapy enabled her to comprehend that she is still able to contribute in a positive way. After she recognized these aspects about herself, she is experiencing a much more peaceful journey amicably transitioning and starting to look forward once again.

Sarah is scared and is worried about what she can offer the world compared to previous roles within her career. We asked her to make a collage of her corporation team, using magazine clippings and an A3 sheet of paper. With her permission, both her drawings and her response to the exercise are detailed below. Using these, directly revealed the discovery Sarah made: that she was still capable of offering these qualities at some level in her new normal, a discovery which prompted her to consider new opportunities for a future career.

Sarah is in her early 40s and has a long United Nations humanitarian health deployment. She has been medically discharged from a retrieval team, who specialized in humanitarian emergency responses. Prior to her health challenges, Sarah would work with doctors, nurses, logistics staff, and pilots in remote and dangerous places. She gained incredible satisfaction and self-esteem, and importantly knew that she was part of a team of real-life superheroes.

Ellie in the past worked as a managing director for a department store company and decided she would create an elevated aerial view with a wide angle, considering how she could represent her life in a professional context. This revealed personal gains for Ellie as she revealed how she used “My love for nature” to nourish her inner strength. She drew animals capering around, sandcastles on a beach, and surfers in the sea. She was extending her metaphor to acknowledge that this would always be part of her, and it can still be part of her essence, providing context to her essence who she was inside, and that her competitiveness is still very much alive.

Ellie is 37, and two months ago was diagnosed with advanced multiple sclerosis. She was receiving physical rehabilitation therapy to strengthen her weak lower limbs but was desperate to return to a form of work to reflect the person she still remembered in her busy and challenging professional role. We asked her to cradle a piece of paper in her lap and make a pencil drawing which depicted a landscape, and to use this exercise as an analogy for her self-image and to consciously represent that which was most important to her at that moment in time.