User:Joannaalejandro/Art therapy

Uses

Using their evaluative and psychotherapy skills, art therapists choose materials and interventions appropriate to their clients' needs and design sessions to achieve therapeutic goals and objectives. Other ways that therapists may choose to use art therapy with their clients include types of art like drawing self-portraits, closing their eyes while drawing, spiral drawing, and lastly drawing their emotions. They use this creative process to help their clients increase insight, cope with stress, work through traumatic experiences, increase cognitive, memory, and neurosensory abilities, improve interpersonal relationships and achieve greater self-fulfillment. The activities an art therapist chooses to do with clients depend on a variety of factors such as their mental state or age. Art therapists may draw upon images from resources such as the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism to incorporate historical art and symbols into their work with patients. Depending on the state, province, or country, the term "art therapist" may be reserved for those who are professionals trained in both art and therapy and hold a master or doctoral degree in art therapy or certification in art therapy obtained after a graduate degree in a related field. Other professionals, such as mental health counselors, social workers, psychologists, and play therapists, optionally combine art-making with basic psychotherapeutic modalities in their treatment. Therapists may better understand a client's absorption of information after assessing elements of their artwork.

Purpose

The purpose of art therapy is essentially one of healing. This type of healing is used to cope with the symptoms that can happen after being diagnosed with cancer, or mental or physical disorder to reduce the suffering of the person. Art therapy does not only help with coping with trauma but helps to find other important information about people. Any type of visual art and art medium can be employed within the therapeutic process, including painting, drawing, sculpting, photography, and digital art. Art therapy may include creative exercises such as drawing or painting a certain emotion, creative journaling, or freestyle creation.

One proposed learning mechanism is through the increased excitation, and as a consequence, strengthening of neuronal connections.