Art therapy, by definition, is a form of psychotherapy that uses art practices to help with any emotional dilemmas and an array of other types of physical and mental problems, so that anyone who needs help can use art to express themselves and represent how they’re feeling through this medium.
It is a practice that has been around for quite some time, but only really gained prominence in the 1940’s and gained more popularity over time and has helped many people, from a range of different ages and backgrounds, to express themselves through art and has provided a substantial amount of help to most people. I will be going more into the history in a later post.
It seems simple, but it’s easy to blow it off as something that either may not be worth doing or even worthwhile at all, especially if people feel they’re not very good at art. It may be true to say that art therapy would not be for everyone as a lot of people feel they can’t express themselves in an artistic way or simply do not want to open up and put it to paper.
I’m going to be writing blogs and a feature-length piece about the benefits of art therapy and I will be going on to talk about the funding that art therapy is given. This will look into whether enough funding is going into this practice and questioning if there should or should not be more funding given to it. This will hopefully raise awareness of the issue and show more people that forms of therapy such as this should be given more time and coverage.
I will, however, be looking on the other side of the question, as to whether or not said funding should go towards art therapy or if it should be focused more towards other forms of therapy instead.
I will be interviewing a range of different people such as art therapists themselves, those who have done art therapy sessions before, other kinds of therapists and those who may be learning to become one themselves. I hope to see a selection of different views and to show what art therapy can achieve in order to broaden people’s understanding of the subject.
Below is the BAAT’s (British Association of Art Therapists) videos on the experiences of people who’ve used art therapy and what it means to them.
http://www.baat.org/About-Art-Therapy/Art-Therapy-Videos
I’ve also included a couple pictures of the work my own mother did while at art therapy, very kindly provided for the site.
Art Therapy Matters 