How It Works

When patients are given a creative, unstructured environment for personal expression, they experience a freedom that allows them to unearth and dissect their inner feelings, which is an important part of the healing process. By using images to communicate, patients often better express their feelings than if they were to convey those emotions verbally.

Each week, patients take part in a full 90-minute art therapy session as part of their group work. These directed projects relate back to topics covered during group sessions as well as the reasons they came into treatment. They may even include music and body movement or different types of expression. In addition to these guided sessions, the art room is open during off times for all patients to use, stocked with paint, clay, collage and drawing materials, pastels, colored pencils, and other creative supplies.

This form of therapy is not at all cognitive, so it works with the lower parts of the brain that we don’t normally have access to, and it’s beneficial to experienced artists and the “creatively-challenged” alike. That’s because the works of art created are not the final product. Instead, the simple yet profound exercise of Expressive Arts Therapy is about what patients can recognize and realize about themselves through the process.