Art Therapy as a Treatment Approach for Addiction
Withholding your emotions and refusing to deal with them is bad for your psyche. Stuffing them away can negatively impact your relationship with yourself and those around you. With that said, is art therapy really used in treating substance disorders? Can it really be effective and help people recover?
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy, as the name implies, is a kind of psychotherapy built around using art to communicate and express oneself. It isn’t used for diagnosis and is instead used as a medium to deal with confusing and distressing emotional issues.
While art therapists are influenced by traditional psychoanalysis, they are inspired by theories such as attachment-based psychotherapy. They have established a range of approaches built around their clients including;
- Mindfulness based treatments
- Cognitive analytic therapies
- Psycho-educational treatments
- Compassion-focused therapies
- Socially engaged practices
Perhaps most importantly, art therapy has evolved to reflect the cultural and social diversity of those who practice it and rely on it.