It’s important to remind participants that this activity is not about who can draw the best and that there’s no wrong way to draw zentangles. Any skill level of artistry easily allows the participant to accomplish Zentangle—to achieve something in a thoughtful and healing format. Participants then imagine being on a boat on a beautiful day, but the weather worsens, and the sea becomes cold and choppy. They are lost and don’t know how to get back, but then a lighthouse appears in the distance. The participants imagine heading toward the light, and they then draw and color their lighthouse, adding words that represent guidance and hope to them.
How to Become an Art Therapist
Studies are often small and inconclusive, so further research is needed to explore how and when art therapy may be most beneficial. Clients who have experienced emotional trauma, physical violence, domestic abuse, anxiety, depression, and other psychological issues can benefit from expressing themselves creatively. AZ would like to thank co-authors, Catriona MacInnes, Simon Reekie, Gill Houlsby, and other art therapists, conversations with whom helped shape the thinking about this research. We would like to invite the art therapy community worldwide to expand this conversation and to explore together, safely but with curiosity and openness, the expanse of the digital world which, if nothing else, deserves our consideration of its relationship to art therapy.
Combining Art and Music Therapy with Conventional Treatment Approaches
Research shows that creative therapies can help you relieve stress, express your emotions, and cope with mental health and emotional challenges in a healthy way. Individuals battling substance use disorders have the luxury of finding inpatient treatment centers that offer innovative practices. Art therapy, music therapy, animal therapy, holistic treatments, and adventure therapy can all impact someone’s motivation and feelings of safety while healing core wounds. Discover what creative but powerfully transforming practices are available to you.
Positive outcomes during addiction treatment include:
One of the most poignant benefits of art therapy for those in recovery from addiction is that at times we can feel “muted” by our emotions, literally rendering us speechless. On other occasions, thoughts may be so rapid art therapy for addiction and erratic that we cannot make sense of what is truly going on. Grabbing some art materials and just drawing, painting, scribbling, or writing words on paper can help to alleviate the stress we feel inside.
- The mean for percent female patients and percent adolescent patients was 34.9% and 10.8%, respectively.
- Art therapy can occur in hospitals, schools, wellness centers or physical rehabilitation centers, substance abuse rehabilitation centers, and correctional facilities.
- After carefully reading full articles, we found that art therapy has been gradually and successfully used for patients with mental disorders with positive outcomes, mainly reducing suffering from mental symptoms.
- Art therapy can help people express themselves more freely, improve their mental health, and improve interpersonal relationships.
- Creative expression has become a cornerstone of modern rehabilitation programs, giving clients a multi-dimensional platform for exploring the more obvious as well as previously uncharted facets of their emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
Together with our chapters and members, AATA advocates for the profession, the communities art therapists serve, and mental health care for everyone. In addition, art therapy has not been found effective for all types of mental health conditions. For example, one meta-analysis found that art therapy is not effective in reducing positive or negative symptoms of schizophrenia. The research to follow must acknowledge the extraordinary circumstances under which art therapy has adopted online mode of working, often not by choice but due to demands of the situation and clients’ or employers’ expectations.
- Creative use of diverse methodologies to examine art therapists’ views is an essential first step, appropriate for the early stage exploration of how (and indeed, whether) digital technology might be used in art therapy practice.
- Clients are encouraged to create art that expresses their inner world more than making something that is an expression of the outer world.
- Art therapy can be powerful in motivating and encouraging people to continue their recovery journey from substance abuse.
The Use of Art and Music Therapy in Substance Abuse Treatment Programs
Finally, we highlight the relationship between the use of EBPs and implementation of art and music therapies in the treatment center. Most examples of scholarly work on art and music therapy and SUD treatment have linked these treatments with use of a 12-step model (Horay, 2006) and suggest complementarity with that approach. Art therapy is designed to complement other recovery services like talk therapy, medication management, and support groups. The treatment is overseen by a trained art therapist who helps patients interpret their experiences and explore strong emotions in a healthy way. There are many art therapy activities that can support the substance abuse recovery process, but here are some useful examples.
Can Art and Music Therapy Help In Addiction Recovery?
There is a potential for this increased engagement to promote community integration and to feel empowering for the client (Orr, 2012; Levy et al., 2018; Spooner et al., 2019). The pace of technological advancements also means that certain technical limitations mentioned in the literature may already be overcome, for example observations by some that a computer is not conducive to group therapy (Kuleba, 2008). Regardless of the mode of delivery, there remains a lot to learn in terms of the emotional and interpersonal implications of digital artmaking for the development of the therapeutic relationship. Previous research encouragingly indicates that therapeutic alliance in verbal psychotherapies can be successfully recreated in an online setting (Sucala et al., 2012). In art therapy case, however, potential impact of technology is not limited to client-therapist relationship but extends to the essence of the triangular relationship including also the artwork. Understanding the impacts of digital tools on the dynamics of this triangular relationship and their place within it seems fundamental to increasing art therapists’ confidence in introducing digital arts media in sessions.
It can be used during as an evidence-based addiction treatment during detoxification and throughout the recovery process. That client was me, and I unwittingly gave my therapist a treasure trove of information to unpack and process over the following few weeks with one simple display of creativity. Where I may have been unable to express through my command of the English language the existence of my obvious perfectionism, much less its origin, my mask spoke volumes about my state of mind and gave my treatment team a roadmap to my psyche. Another aspect that may strengthen the effectiveness of art therapy is a phenomenon called containment. Containment allows clients to use visual representations to contain difficult thoughts and experiences that might arise during therapy.