Art is not just about painting pretty pictures, but also about healing your mental health. If you’re feeling stressed or bereaved or angry or depressed, art can sometimes help, when simple words are not enough. Use vegan watercolour paints and brushes, and recycled art paper.
Art therapy is recommended by the NHS, often used as a way for people (especially children) to process traumatic experiences, including abuse. Sometimes a young person who has been abused is not able to speak about such experiences, but could instead use art to process and relate their feelings.
Trained art therapists use a form of psychotherapy to help process trauma, and let people move on. Of course art therapy is also useful for people who can’t talk, for instance people with severe autism or mental/physical disabilities that makes them unable to communicate in conventional methods.
The Handbook of Art Therapy is the ‘bible of art therapy’, written by experienced practitioners, and regularly updaed. It looks at how art therapy can be used in contemporary settings and includes a new chapter about using art therapy online. Using first-hand accounts, it looks at the benefits and different methods used, and features basic theory and practice, as the classic text for art therapists, counsellors and psychotherapists.
British Association of Art Therapists lists where to find qualified art therapists, who are highly trained to post-degree level. Note you don’t have to be good at art, to benefit!
