In order to provide clinical utility for research of how art therapists perceive clients' inner change, the authors created a structured observational framework. This note-taking and assessment consist of five themes and sub-themes: Therapeutic Alliance, Creating, Affect-Awareness, Self-Awareness, and Ego-Strength. The framework was designed to be…

People with intellectual disability (ID) generally tend to have difficulties expressing their thoughts and feelings verbally. Art-based therapies rely less on cognitive ability and verbal skills and aim to promote mental health. Drama therapy provides a playful framework to communicate problematic issues and to foster social skills.…

This case study describes an art therapy intervention with a client diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease who was coping with grief. The course of fifteen sessions included three phases: body awareness, grief emotions, and grief acceptance. The positive changes parallel ways that art therapy can benefit older adults by promoting communication,…

The fertility policy liberalization in China has meant that many firstborn children are stressed by a newborn sibling's arrival. This case study explores creative arts intervention as an innovative stress management approach to alleviate a Chinese girl's maladaptive reactions during her transition to siblinghood. A weekly 17-session tailored…

Art therapy reduces trauma-related psychopathology in refugee youth. Given the added stress of COVID-19 on traumatized refugee populations, we adapted art therapy for refugee youth and their families in the virtual space. We describe program development, implementation and experientials, and clinical recommendations illustrated through two cases.…

In order to advance Chinese culturally-appropriate art therapy practice, a qualitative study identified key indigenous factors. The investigation documented contextual adaptations made by 7 Taiwanese "sojourner" art therapists. Inductive thematic analysis yielded six themes, which identified from the participants' descriptions of art…

This study examined the effects of group art therapy on self-concept and peer relationships among adolescents using a mixed-method approach. Twelve recruited adolescents from a high school in Northern Taiwan attended weekly 2-h group art therapy sessions for 8 weeks. Through a discovery-oriented approach incorporating focus group interviews and…

This article presents a new method for encouraging clients to articulate and explore their narrative identities. The method combines the advantages of perception of art and of construction of narrative identity. It is inspired by McAdams 'Life Story Interview' and Hermans and Hermans-Jansen's Self-Confrontation Method. The material is a set of 100…

The academic and emotional difficulties that stem from learning disorders can extend from childhood into adulthood. The Understand Me and My Surroundings is an art therapy directive that incorporates Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory designed to help adult clients reflect on their experiences. A case study demonstrates how this process…

This study correlated measures of adolescents' rejection sensitivity with their self-drawings in a sample of 323 nonclinical Israeli adolescents. Drawings were coded using the DAP-SPED scoring system (Naglieri, 1988). The findings indicated no correlation between adolescents' level of rejection sensitivity and the DAP-SPED composite score. A…

This article examines the context and content of 15 drawings created in the early 1990s by Guatemalan children who survived government-led systemic violence against their Maya Tz'utujil community. Titled "Children in Crisis," all 15 drawings collected by Albert Hurwitz depict similar stories of loss and violence. Considering the…

A particular political and social mindset toward mental health support has impacted how and why people seek counseling and therapy in Ukraine. Although a relatively small and developing field, art therapy is beginning to provide a means for assisting cultural and identity development for young adult Ukrainians during a time of civil and political…

During the 1930s and 1940s art increasingly came to be used as a therapeutic tool with children who were perceived as damaged by their experiences of war or displacement. This article explores two related exhibitions--"Children's Art from All Countries" (1941) and "The War as Seen by Children" (1943)--which provided a platform…

Multicultural competence is essential to contemporary art therapy practice. Current education standards require that culturally sound theories and practices be taught along with self-awareness, but there is little research on the effects of such training in art therapy. The current study examined data from the Multicultural Awareness, Knowledge,…

This article presents findings from a study of the therapeutic effects of group art therapy in a psychotherapy unit of a Russian hospital for war veterans. The researchers randomly assigned 112 veterans being treated for stress-related disorders to an experimental group (art therapy) and a control group. The emphasis was on the use of humor in the…