Therapy and counseling are definitely beneficial to one’s well being. One way to step it up a notch can be to complement it with creative art therapy. Creative art therapy is a great addition to intervention therapy as well. With creative arts, individuals are able to express their thoughts and emotions, achieve self realizations, boost confidence, broaden personal perspective, and also focus on a healthy distraction.
As a form of psychotherapy, art therapy often involves both the creation of art and the discovery of its meaning. For those with mental illness, it’s the creative process that becomes therapeutic – visualizing, creating, and having a finished product that expressed thoughts and emotions they couldn’t put into words.
Even though creative art therapy comes in handy for nonverbal expression and growth, it can be very social as well. For example, a dance class. Someone could be expressing themselves through the movement of their body, which also physically feels good, among a friendly group of other dancers. This is also an opportunity to build friendships and connect with others, as well as ourselves.
Creative art therapy gives practitioners a way to understand the inner worlds of people with mental illness. Maybe they aren’t able to express themselves verbally, but we can visually understand them.
The obvious types of creative art therapy would be painting, learning how to play music, or dancing. But it can go a lot deeper than that. Therapists can use art as methods or techniques as aides to understand individuals. For example, a therapist working with a child might start a drawing of a child and ask them to add details around the child, such as something that she does that makes her happy. Therapists will also use imagery as metaphors or see details in a patient’s drawing as metaphors. Visual journals, magazine collages, making masks, creating art with a group or alone, or creating sculptures are all examples of possible creative art therapies.
References:
Art therapy and mental health. (n, d.). International Art Therapy Organization. Retrieved September 20, 2014, from http://www.internationalarttherapy.org/mentalhealth.html
