Therapy has been constantly changing and growing, helping those in need and changing lives with each patient that explores its reaches. Each form of therapy, allowing a patient to heal with different techniques and processes, has made a name for itself and has grown a following.  Art therapy, one of the most recently founded forms of therapy, has been growing and exciting those who try it; its unique approach to healing both impresses and shocks those who encounter it. Opening the eyes to the skeptical, and proving them its importance, art therapy is an integral part of the therapeutic community and its significance continues to inspire those affected by it.  

Art therapy is a sort of new-wave therapy; it is one of the most recently founded forms of therapy and is continuously growing and surprising those who try it. Being an expressive based therapy, art therapists integrate the creative process into their work to help their patients physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Art therapy is amongst the most fluid forms of therapy used on people with any forms of ailments; it changes for every person that tries it. Instead of having a tried and true way of preforming this form of therapy, art therapists are constantly changing along with their patients, developing their own personal techniques as they go, while still following the basic ideals that art therapists around the world base their practice on. 

Art therapists are trained to know what and when to use certain art materials for certain situations. Different methods have gained cumulative knowledge as to what works where. For example, oil paints tend to be used for patients who have a long road of therapy ahead of them because oil paint takes an extremely long time to dry, allowing for the patient to continue their therapy without feeling they are going nowhere. This makes art therapy different from any other therapy; there is a tangible difference in methods used in order to treat different patients. Instead of  basing the practice around a single method, composed of many sub-methods, art therapy has many different forms of treatment that are composed of smaller, more individual treatments. 

Rather than simply trying to understand a patient through spoken word, art therapists are able to decipher what certain aspects of the patients artwork mean, and move forward from there.  According to QuinStreet.inc, phototherapy, family sculpture, and digital art are some of the many ways in which art therapy is able to aid clients toward the healing process. Phototherapy is technique in which the patient brings in all personal photographs, and both the therapist and patient go through them and decipher each one, creating a sort of timeline, allowing the patient to look at their life and determine where their ailments appear in the timeline. Family structure, another form of art therapy, is where the patient is asked to create each family members using clay. The clay does not have to look like the family members, the focus is more on the representation of the family members, and the visualization of these family member allows the patient to put into words on how they feel about these family members without them actually being there, while still having something to talk to simulating the family member. Digital art, drawing through a computer, has been shown to help patients who complain of aches due to drawing with a pencil or other materials. Autistic children have shown to believe that drawing with a pencil actually hurts their hands, while drawing on a computerized pad is more relaxing for them, and can be used in a therapeutic setting. Just simply drawing or painting and using colors can help some, while for others it has no effect. That is why through the use of digital media, patients are able to explore new realms of art that are unavailable with the hand. These uses of art allows the patients all to have a physical connection with their issues, and address them firsthand. For example, QuinStreet uses an example where a girl was affected with trauma, and had drawn herself as a black figure. The therapist asked her to use different colors to represent her other personalities and when she was done, she was able to see that the tangible representation of herself was actually much more colorful despite the large amount of black she concluded was the worst part of her personality. This tangible representation of the patients personality helped her to understand that despite her negative beliefs she had of herself, she was still a very positive, and quite literally bright person.

Many people believe that art therapy is used for those who have tried everything else, and turn to art therapy as a last-ditch effort. These people are wrong; people all over the country and world turn to art therapy as an initial form of treatment for their ailment, whatever it may be. Studies have shown cancer patients, people who suffer from PTSD, and children with behavioral problems can all be treated with art therapy. All three conditions different, all three capable of healing. When our nations veterans return home from war, they tend to suffer some sort of PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, and this can lead to strained family relations, impaired work ability, and even impair daily functioning. Unable to put their feelings into words, typically because they are just so traumatic that is hard for the brain to actually understand, veterans can turn to art therapy to allow their feelings to be put into a more physical state, thus allowing the patient and therapist to work out each individual meaning, placing words into the traumatic memories associated with post traumatic stress disorder. 

These are not the only forms of illness’ that art therapy can heal, but they are amongst the most prominently researched topics. In a recent TED talks video, Anne Basting speaks of her endeavors in expanding the reach of art therapies capabilities in terms of healing those who can no longer fight to heal themselves. She ventures into the realm of the term “social isolationism,” she found through her research of art therapy that those found in nursing homes were being placed in large rooms together to socialize, but, in this case specifically, the patients all had alzheimer’s disease and therefore had no capabilities to genuinely interact with one another. Alzheimers disease is a disease of the mind, hindering a persons memory and other very important daily functions of the body. This disease, affecting nearly 3 million people a year, causes the patients to lose the very important aspect of having an actual personal connection with another.

Basting speaks of her weekly meetings with the Alzheimers patients, that turned into daily meetings, where she focused on incorporating art into her meetings to allow for the elders to communicate more than they would had art not been involved. Basting implies the importance of the arts to spark a connection between those socially isolated, specifically in nursing homes. Without the use of the arts, patients were isolated, slowly and unknowingly allowing their brains to deteriorate due to lack of communication. Basting is a professor of theater at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and has many books and articles published on the importance of the arts and its affects on dementia. Without innovators in the field such as Basting, art therapy would not be growing at such a pace as it is today.

From its beginnings in Northeastern United States, specifically New York City, art therapy has been pushing forward towards making a name for itself in its field. Art in itself has been a large aspect of human nature; from prehistoric times to modernism, art has been very relevant in the human experience. Whether it be a form of communication, or a stress relief, art has consistently been present. Margaret Naumberg, considered the “mother of art therapy,” first published her findings of the correlation between art and therapy in 1940, while her accomplice, Edith Kramer, published her findings on the subject in 1958. Although these women helped shape the future of art therapy, art has always been a prominent form of stress-relief. Though it is not considered therapy without a trained therapist present, the integration between art and therapy was monumental. A new form of treating the mentally, physically, and emotionally ill was created, thus allowing for more people to be healed by the use of therapy. 

Art therapy is a very necessary and important form of therapy because it allows patients a voice they did not know they had. This form of therapy explores feelings that patients may not have had words for; it expands the horizons to the illiterate, to those with speaking problems, and to those who simply are unable to put their feelings into words. Instead of spending time and time again trying to get around a patients self guard against revealing personal information, an art therapist is able to identify what the patient is feeling without them ever saying a word. 

As much as it is growing, art therapy hasn't always had such a steady increase in followers. Without funding, research cannot be conducted, resulting in the deterioration of the practice, which in turn concludes to less patients healed and even more suffering. Farah Joan Fard, author of the article, “The Expanding Reach of Art Therapy,” speaks of the importance for the practice of arts therapy to grow into a commonly used form of therapy, but due to its lack of social awareness, many people are unfamiliar with the practice and tend to stray away from its rewarding benefits. Fard is not alone in this belief that without proper funding, art therapy will most likely cease to exist; Kaimal Girija, author of “‘Art Therapy’ Program Evaluation: A Doorway to Research in the Creative Arts Therapies: Art Therapy: Vol 32, No2,” believes this as well and urges readers to help support the practice in any way possible. 

Through funding and awareness, art therapy is able to grow and thrive as a practice and healer. Without these two, art therapy would not be as significant a therapy as it is today. Many different proposals have been made in order to increase awareness which increases funding and research. Proposals such as program evaluation have been strongly suggested; through program evaluation, people are able to understand that art therapy actually works by watching it heal patients first hand. This additional push towards an increased awareness can in turn increase funding, because more people are able to see the positive effects that art therapy has on a patient, and will want to help in any way to increase its availability to people. “The arts therapies are often constrained by insufficient funding sources as well as a limited number of researchers who conduct systematic studies.” (Kaimal, Program Evaluation: A Doorway to Research in the Creative Arts Therapies) 

Though art history has been steadily gaining a name for itself in the therapy community, it hasn't always had this increase in awareness. From its beginnings to where it currently stands, art therapy has always had those that doubt its use. Natalie Rogers has been a prone benefactor of arts therapy, and has even founded the Person-Centered Expressive Arts Therapy Institution in Santa Rosa California. With a father already a therapist, she saw the way in which therapy can help a patient, and wanted to integrate the arts into it. Since beginning as an advocate for arts therapy back in the 60’s. Rogers has tirelessly proven those who doubt the practice wrong. She had spent her career integrating the expressive arts in to psychotherapy, and succeeded; gaining followers and expanding the practice on a global scale. In many ways, Rogers is the founder of the expressive arts therapy, and is very much responsible for where it prominently stands today in the therapeutic community. 

Many people hear of art therapy and automatically think of the art that one preforms at home for fun. Others hear of it and assume it is a pseudo-therapy, that it doesn't actually work; what these people don't know is that it has been proven time and time again to work and to heal. Art has been proven to work as a relaxant, so one may think that creating art by oneself is a form of art therapy. Though they may feel that they are healing themselves, art therapy is not considered a therapy unless an actual, certified therapist is present in the healing process. Art therapy is also not just a one-on-one therapy, it is extremely useful in a group setting; according to Dr. Sarah Deaver, president of the American Art Therapy Association, if a group of children were to be placed in a room, all for the purpose of art therapy, and asked to collage, they will each feed off of each other and it will ultimately allow them to feel comfortable and share their feelings with one another. This feeling of openness, a feeling many believe is uncommon during a session of art therapy, is facilitated through the therapists knowledge of what materials to use and when to use them. 

Change isn't always good; for the most part, change tends to scare people away from new experiences. When it comes to art therapy, many people are skeptical of its use and purpose,  because they have never seen this new form of therapy actually work. Like anything, there are definitely risk factors involved in this new practice, but none that are different from any other form of therapy.  According to Neil Springham, a clinical psychologist, “the banding survey completed by the Art Therapy Practice Research Network (Evans, 2007 Evans , C. 2007 Summer. Engaging complex needs in art therapy. British Association of Art Therapists Newsbriefing 12 – 17.) caused me to reflect that it is possible that because art therapists see the most vulnerable populations, it is probable that the issue of risk is magnified.” (Springham, “Risk Discourse in Art Therapy) History has shown that the human species as a whole tends to be wary when new ideas are presented; change scares us. That is why when a new way of healing is presented, most people will react in a negative way, trying to find out all the reasons why not to participate in this practice. Like all therapies, and most things in life, there are risks included into the practice of art therapy. Studies have shown that nearly 10% of those who participate in art therapy are actually worsened mentally than when they began their treatment. This is because instead of allowing the patient to tell what they believe is true the therapist is able to go deeper into meanings and allow the patient to realize what their brain was theoretically blocking them from discovering. This new information could cause harm to the patient mentally, as they are unprepared for a new light to be shed on their issues at hand. 

Knowing that there are risks involved in participating in art therapy, it is imperative to understand that these risks typically only aid in furthering the healing process associated with art therapy. The commonly used phrase “one step forward, two steps back,” is very applicable to the practice of arts therapy, because when progress seems to be made, the patient may realize something that can take them back mentally or emotionally, opening up new roads towards the healing process. Fully understanding that each individual will take different amounts of time to completely recover from their ailment, and allowing oneself to give their full and best effort towards healing, will only help the patient. 

With this new form of therapy, people can experience the arts in a completely new way, a way in which they never thought could exist. By integrating the arts into therapy, patients are allowed a tangible representation of the feelings some may not even have known they had. This physical representation allowing patients to see their issues, which enables them to identify them easily, putting them into the words they may not have had. Without this new form of therapy, people around the world wouldn't be as inspired to heal through the creative process, keeping their minds closed and their emotions captive. 
