Overview
Creative arts therapists treat and reha-bilitate people with mental, physical, and emotional disabilities. They use the creative processes of music, art, dance/
movement, drama, psychodrama, and poetry in their therapy sessions to deter-mine the underlying causes of problems and to help patients achieve therapeutic goals. Creative arts therapists usually specialize in one particular type of ther-apeutic activity. The specific objectives of the therapeutic activities vary accord-ing to the needs of the patient and the setting of the therapy program.
HistOry
Creative arts therapy programs are fairly recent additions to the health care field. Although many theories of mental and physical therapy have existed for centuries, it has been only in the last 75 years or so that health care professionals have truly real-ized the healing powers of music, art, dance, and other forms of artistic self-expression.
Art therapy is based on the idea that people who cannot discuss their problems with words must have another outlet for self-expression. In the early 1900s, psychiatrists began to look more closely at their patients’
artwork, realizing that there could be
links between the emotional or psychological illness and the art.
Sigmund Freud even did some preliminary research into the artistic expression of his patients.
Creative Arts
In the 1930s, art educators discovered that children often expressed their thoughts better with pictures and role-playing than they did through verbalization. Children often do not know the words they need to explain how they feel or how to make their needs known to adults. Researchers began to look into art as a way to treat children who were traumatized by abuse, neglect, illness, or other physical or emotional disabilities.
During and after World War II, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) developed and organized various art, music, and dance activities for patients in VA hospitals. These activities had a dramatic effect on the physical and mental well-being of World War II veter-ans, and creative arts therapists began to help treat and rehabilitate patients in other health care settings.
Because of early breakthroughs with children and veterans, the number of arts therapists has increased greatly over the past few decades, and the field has expanded to include drama, psychodrama, and poetry, in addition to the original areas of music, art, and dance.
Today, creative arts therapists work with diverse populations of patients in a wide range of facilities, and they focus on the spe-cific needs of a vast spectrum of disorders and disabilities. Colleges and universities offer degree programs in many types of therapies.
National associations for registering and certifying creative arts therapists work to monitor training programs and to ensure the pro-fessional integrity of the therapists working in the various fields.
tHe JOb
Creative arts therapy taps into the subconscious and gives people a mode of expression in an uncensored environment. This is important because before patients can begin to heal, they must first identify their feelings. Once they recognize their feelings, they can begin to develop an understanding of the relationship between their feelings and their behavior.
The main goal of a creative arts therapist is to improve the client’s physical, mental, and emotional health. Before therapists begin any treatment, they meet with a team of other health care profession-als. After determining the strength, limitations, and interests of their client, they create a program to promote positive change and growth. The creative arts therapist continues to confer with the other health care workers as the program progresses and alters the pro-gram according to the client’s progress. How these goals are reached depends on the unique specialty of the therapist in question.
“It’s like sitting in the woods waiting for a fawn to come out.”
That is how Barbara Fish, former director of activity therapy for
Creative Arts Therapists
the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Dis-abilities, Chicago Metropolitan and Adolescent Services, describes her experience as she waits patiently for a sexually abused patient to begin to trust her. The patient is extraordinarily frightened because of the traumatic abuse she has suffered. This may be the first time in the patient’s life that she is in an environment of acceptance and support. It may take months or even years before the patient begins to trust the therapist, “come out of the woods,” and begin to heal.
In some cases, especially when the clients are adolescents, they may have become so detached from their feelings that they can phys-ically act out without consciously knowing the reasons for their behavior. This detachment from their emotions creates a great deal of psychological pain. With the help of a creative arts therapist, clients can begin to communicate their subconscious feelings both verbally and nonverbally. They can express their emotions in a vari-ety of ways without having to name them.
Creative arts therapists work with all age groups: young children, adolescents, adults, and senior citizens. They can work in individual, group, or family sessions. The approach of the therapist, however, depends on the specific needs of the client or group. For example, if an individual is feeling overwhelmed by too many options or stimuli, the therapist may give him or her only a plain piece of paper and a pencil to work with that day.
Fish has three ground rules for her art therapy sessions with disturbed adolescents: respect yourself, respect other people, and respect property. The therapy groups are limited to five patients per group. She begins the session by asking each person in the group how he or she is feeling that day. By carefully listening to their responses, a theme may emerge that will determine the direction of the therapy.
For example, if anger is reoccurring in their statements, Fish may ask them to draw a line down the center of a piece of paper. On one side, she will ask them to draw how anger looks and on the other side how feeling sad looks. Then, once the drawing is complete, she will ask them to compare the two pictures and see that their anger may be masking their feelings of sadness, loneliness, and disappointment.
As patients begin to recognize their true feelings, they develop better control of their behavior.
To reach their patients, creative arts therapists can use a variety of mediums, including visual art, music, dance, drama, or poetry or other kinds of creative writing. Creative arts therapists usually special-ize in a specific medium, becoming a music therapist, drama therapist, dance therapist, art therapist, or poetry therapist. “In my groups we use poetry and creative writing,” Fish explains. “We do all kinds of things to get at what is going on at an unconscious level.”
Music therapists use musical lessons and activities to improve a patient’s self-confidence and self-awareness, to relieve states of depression, and to improve physical dexterity. For example, a music therapist treating a patient with Alzheimer’s might play songs from the patient’s past in order to stimulate long- and short-term memory, soothe feelings of agitation, and increase a sense of reality.
Art therapists use art in much the same manner. The art therapist may encourage and teach patients to express their thoughts, feelings, and anxieties via sketching, drawing, painting, or sculpting. Art therapy is especially helpful in revealing patterns of domestic abuse in families. Children involved in such a situation may depict scenes of family life with violent details or portray a certain family member as especially frightening or threatening.
Dance/movement therapists develop and conduct dance/movement sessions to help improve the physical, mental, and emotional health of their patients. Dance and movement therapy is also used as a way of assessing a patient’s progress toward reaching therapeutic goals.
There are other types of creative arts therapists as well. Drama therapists use role-playing, pantomime (telling a story through expressive body or facial movements), puppetry, improvisation, and