Art and Wellbeing

The therapeutic properties of art have long been recognised and many people feel that art helps them cope with personal challenges: Winston Churchill was one such famous person who found painting brought solace to his depression.

Although using art this way can be valuable and helpful, it can also be part of a therapeutic treatment.  Art Therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses art media as its primary mode of communication. It has been a State Registered Profession since 1997. Clients who use Art Therapy may have a wide range of difficulties, disabilities or diagnoses. These may include emotional, behavioural or mental health problems, learning or physical disabilities, life-limiting conditions, brain injury or neurological conditions and physical illness.

Art Therapy may be provided for groups or for individuals, depending on the client’s needs. It is not a recreational activity or an art lesson and clients do not need to have any previous experience or expertise in art, but many find that they do reconnect with their creative side and start making art in their own time.

Why use Art?

Everyone has creative potential and using it is an essential part of our well-being. It is part of our experience when, as children, we make sense of our world through play, an enjoyable but also ‘serious’ activity, as it helps us understand ourselves and others.

Art is an essential part of this, as anybody who has witnessed young children getting absorbed in art making will know: to the outside observer, the resulting work may look like a brown mess, but to the child, the picture will hold stories, characters and feelings that will be meaningful and important. When creating visual images, people ‘draw on’ the right side of their brains – the same side that is used before spoken language develops.  It is where visual memories are stored.

Using art materials to make images which can be thought about with an Art Therapist may help relieve difficult or painful feelings and can help increase general wellbeing.  Sometimes it can be difficult to talk directly about problems and feelings so communicating through another medium may be easier or more appropriate. Sometimes when it's impossible to find the right words, the processes involved in image making and the images themselves can be expressive.  There may also be just too many words – and they can get in the way of being able to be in touch with emotions. These are just some of the reasons for the ‘art’ in Art Therapy.

Developments in Art Therapy

Traditionally Art Therapy has tended to be provided within public services and third sector organisations to clients with severe mental health and learning difficulties conditions. Lately there has been a noticeable growth of provision of Art Therapy in mainstream schools as the emotional needs of some children seem to become more acute.  Very importantly, Art Therapy is now being used in other fields such as general medicine, to help with recovery and general wellbeing when people face life changing physical conditions. Other complementary health practices have long been established in these fields and clients have constantly reported how valuable these are.

Art Therapy has been tried and evaluated in GP surgeries.  An Art Therapist piloted a service for children who had diverse complaints: unexplained physical symptoms, diagnosed conditions, such as asthma and diabetes, behavioural problems such as bedwetting, sleeplessness or recent trauma such as bereavement, divorce, and bullying. A three year audit of this service showed a high level of user satisfaction. Ninety per cent of the GPs agreed that referral to art therapy had reduced their referral rates to Child and Adolescents Mental Health Services and 66% felt that patients had attended surgery less frequently since referral to Art Therapy*.

Art Therapists have also become involved in work with Galleries and Museums, and recently, the Art Therapists at Oxleas Mental Health Trust have developed a partnership with Tate Britain.  Service users and carers have become actively engaged in using the gallery as a resource for wellbeing. 

At 17, Fran daughter’s promising university career was cut short by schizophrenia. As a carer, Fran had to cope with both distressing behaviour and the loss of her daughter as a known person. Through taking part in the Gallery work with other carers Fran was able to define and work through the difficult feelings with others who understood her. Heartbreakingly, she realized she had to let her previous relationship with daughter go and instead needed to get to know her daughter as she is now. However, one of her daughter’s symptoms was a paranoid delusion about meeting in the family home.  Fran needed a place to meet and connect with her daughter decided that she would replicate the work she had done in the gallery with her daughter. She used the techniques she had learned to go round the Tate Britain using the pictures as a non-threatening way of building a new relationship with her daughter. They both enjoyed it and are finding new ways of connecting through the arts despite the restrictions of severe mental illness.

The painter of this picture, Sue, has struggled with Multiple Sclerosis and Cancer, and has used Art Therapy to process painful and challenging experiences that often made her feel all at sea. She says of this image: ‘The big waves do not go away. You can’t paint them out.   But you can paint them in and by doing so I’ve learnt a bit about riding  over them and even going through them without being overwhelmed’. 
      
 Contact: info@baat.org; website: www.baat.org

* ‘Art Therapy in General Practice’ – Val Huet, National Association of Primary Care Review, Winter 2004/2005, Sovereign Publications Ltd.