ART Therapy

Any child therapist worth their salt will not sit a child across from them and expect them to engage in a 50 minute discussion! For children and adolescents, art making can be an easily accessible form of communication and one access point to connect in addition to play.

Art Therapy (sometimes referred to as Creative Arts Therapy) is a mental health profession that uses art making in conjunction with verbal psychotherapy to improve mental health. It requires extensive post graduate education (a minimum of 2 years for a Masters), a national board exam, and 1500 hours of supervised post graduate level clinical experience to be licensed in NY State. 

When incorporating Art Therapy in sessions, I frequently ask my client to make artwork around specific themes. For example, instead of asking a teenager how she feels and receiving a two word reply like "I'm ok", I might ask her to show me how she feels by drawing her mood as a weather condition. Then we can look at the art together, and explore what's really coming up for her through the use of metaphor. 

"A picture is worth a thousand words" is an adage in multiple cultures that conveys the message that the essence or meaning of multiple ideas can be more effectively expressed by a single image, than by verbal description. Art Therapy offers a unique opportunity to access difficult topics, develop coping skills, and increase understanding when words alone are not enough.