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Art therapy has been recognized as beneficial and effective since first described by Adrian Hill in 1942. Even before this time, art therapy was utilized for moral reinforcement and psychoanalysis. Art therapy aids patients with, but not limited to, chronic illness, physical challenges, and cancer in both pediatric and adult scenarios. Although effective in patient care, the practice of art therapy is extremely underutilized, especially in suburban areas. While conducting our own study in northeastern Ohio, USA, we found that only one out of the five inpatient institutions in the suburban area of Mahoning County, Ohio, that we contacted provided continuous art therapy to it's patients. In the metropolitan area of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, only eight of the twenty-two inpatient institutions in the area provided art therapy. There could be many reasons as to why art therapy is not frequently used in these areas, and medical institutions in general. The cause of this could be the amount of research done on the practice. Although difficult to conduct formal research on such a broad field, the American Art Therapy Association has succeeded in doing such, with studies showing improvement of the patient groups emotionally and mentally in many case types.

This Research Watch aims to summarise two recent and very different research publications on art therapy and comments on their ability to shed light on the usefulness of art therapy to address mental distress and enhance social inclusion.

The author discusses a recent edition of a UK art therapy journal in which research papers focus on art therapy with people who have been given a diagnosis of personality disorder. The main methodologies are qualitative describing participants’ and/or therapists’ experiences and the role of art therapy in addressing serious mental distress. The second publication is a recent report of a large randomised controlled trial of art therapy for people given a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The author assesses the value of both publications in informing us about the usefulness of art therapy in addressing mental distress and enhancing social inclusion.

In the author's view, neither publication establishes definitively how or whether art therapy might address serious mental distress, whether labelled personality disorder or schizophrenia. However, the qualitative articles provide insight into possible helpful (and less helpful) aspects of therapy. The randomised trial should have been able to establish general principles about the effectiveness of art therapy for a specific group of people in specified contexts, but instead exemplifies many problems inherent in the pervasive research culture of putting numbers onto complex human interactions and calculating their value for money, sometimes at the expense of really understanding what is going on.

The author draws upon these two very different examples of research to reflect a current dilemma in UK art therapy research, and tentatively looks at possible ways forward.

Group art therapy involves art-making, which has been used throughout human history to symbolise struggle and transformation with group support. The purpose of this paper is to discuss two recent papers on how and why group art therapy may be helpful.

A search was carried out to find recent papers on group art therapy, with a focus on how and why it may be helpful.

One paper reported on 119 accounts of why group art therapy may be helpful. Five things seemed specific to group art therapy: using artworks to express experiences symbolically, connect with others, place confusing feelings outside oneself, and be playful, and following a set routine with others. The other paper reported in detail on group art therapy sessions with people who had a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Group interaction became most supportive when the art therapist clearly focused on people’s thoughts and feelings about artworks made by group members.

It has been unclear how group art therapy may help people. Understanding this means researchers can do more rigorous research on it. The two papers discussed represent probably the largest synthesis of different sources on how group art therapy might work, and the most detailed observation of what happens in practice. Both papers suggest group art therapy uses art to symbolise struggle and transformation with support from others, thus normalising this process and including those going through it rather than marginalising them. Parallels can be drawn with older healing rituals, in which crisis and struggle were viewed as normal.

The relationship between learning and mental health, as well as a growing body of literature, underscores the need for art therapy in educational settings. This is particularly true for learners with special needs. Shostak et al. (1985) affirmed that “for children with special needs, art therapy in a school setting can offer opportunities to work through obstacles that impede educational success” (p. 19). School art therapy facilitates improved social interaction, increased learning behaviors, appropriate affective development, and increased empathy and personal well-being. It can be adapted to meet the specific developmental needs of individual students and to parallel students’ developmental, learning, and behavioral objectives. This chapter introduces the reader to the history and basic constructs of art therapy as a psychoeducational therapeutic intervention in schools. Model programs are identified, as well as the role of the art therapist within the context of K-12 education settings. Additionally, examples of special populations who benefit from art therapy intervention within school systems are provided, along with considerations for school-wide art therapy.

The refugee journey is fraught with challenges before, during and after resettlement. There is a critical need for mental health support upon arrival, and refugees face language, cultural and logistical barriers. Arts-based therapies are a promising approach to mitigating such barriers. The purpose of this study was to elicit professional stakeholder perspectives on mental health challenges among refugees, the value of arts-based programs and future directions.

The authors conducted three 90-min focus groups with 19 professional stakeholders in North Carolina, USA. This included mental health professionals, professors and community services/resettlement workers. Participants were identified from professional networks and snowball sampling. Each group was held by videoconference, audio recorded and transcribed. Data were analyzed through a team-based approach using applied thematic qualitative analysis.

Interviewees described a need for targeted, culturally compatible mental health services for refugee families, including trauma-informed, family-focused services with language interpretation. Arts-based therapies were viewed as highly acceptable and culturally responsive approaches for understanding distress and building resilience and less stigmatizing than traditional mental health services. Services in schools and community settings would further reduce stigma and minimize logistical barriers. Participants identified needing strong, culturally sensitive assessment tools to measure treatment progress as a key future direction.

The study offers novel insights into the value of arts-based approaches and considerations for program development. The next phase of the project will obtain the perspectives of refugee parents and children to understand client preferences for arts-based therapies.

This paper aims to describe service user experiences of an art psychotherapy group which drew on occupational therapy perspectives to help adults with severe and enduring mental health difficulties move forward in their recovery.

A case study approach incorporating outcome data was used. The data gathered comprised attendance, facilitators’ clinical notes, photographs of participant artworks, the Psychological Outcome Profiles questionnaire (PSYCHLOPS: www.psychlops.org), a post-therapy feedback form, discussion at post-therapy individual review sessions and participants’ achievements post-group.

All but one participant scored the group as “very helpful” or “helpful” and all felt that the group had helped them with the personal aims they had identified. The PSYCHLOPS questionnaire yielded a large average effect size, indicating positive change in terms of problems, functioning and well-being. Participants identified several ways in which the group was helpful, and their artwork and reflections indicate how they used the art making in the group to pursue their recovery goals. The service user experiences and outcomes suggest that this group was effective in facilitating recovery for these adults with severe and enduring mental health difficulties.

This group was innovative in integrating approaches from the different professional specialisms and the findings encourage further investigation into this way of working.

The occurrences of natural hazards in Southeast Asia have become not only more frequent but their severity has also intensified. More than 200,000 persons perished from the 2004 tsunami resulting from the 9.1 magnitude earthquake in coastal Sumatra, Indonesia, which was the third strongest since 1900. A record-breaking typhoon internationally named Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda) ravaged Central Philippines in 2013. Failure of the communities, as well as the countries, to cope with the hazards has led to disasters that have compelled them to seek external assistance, especially internationally. In the 2004 and 2013 disasters referred to, one specific form of assistance was the conduct of art therapy especially for children. This chapter surveys the literature and examines why and how art therapy has been used in disasters in the region, and which areas either need further exploration or research.

The purpose of this study is to investigate what resources recent refugees to the USA tap into and how collaborative expressive movements were experienced with regard to coping and resourcing, and to derive a theoretical model that would inform the use of dance/movement therapy and other holistic treatment modalities with refugees.

A total of 13 refugees overall participated in parts of this study. Ten of these refugees completed movement sessions and semi-structured in-person interviews. Constructivist grounded theory methods and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data.

The findings suggest that refugees draw on a number of resources. The collaborative movement experiences seemed to have both a settling and mobilizing effect with the most important phenomenon of connection to the self or to another person. A grounded theory model, developed based on the findings, shows a dynamic interaction between the encountered categories.

The findings are preliminary and not transferrable because of limited size and potential researcher bias.

The findings contribute to an understanding of the resettlement and acculturation phase of refugees with potential implications and suggestions for current clinical practices and health services.

This study was original in its focus on understanding the role and the potential of body and expressive movement among refugees who have experienced trauma. Adherence to transformative paradigm principles invited participants to become co-researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to set an example of how people with severe learning difficulties could be more integrated into our society.

The installation consists of puzzles in the form of a specially designed table with an integrated touch screen. As the visual templates for the puzzles serve pictures painted by a person with severe learning difficulties. The pieces of the puzzles are manipulated directly by the player on the touch screen presenting an intuitive and easily learned user interface.

The framework for the work was a creation of an interactive art installation in the form of a game where users assemble puzzles on a touch monitor, housed in a specially designed table. Paintings by a person with severe learning difficulty served as visual templates for the puzzles. The pieces of the puzzles can be manipulated directly by the user on a touch screen presenting an intuitive and easily learned user interface, which stimulates the learning of fine motor skills and encourages practice, thus making it suitable for persons with severe learning difficulties in an art therapy setting.

As the work has the format of an interactive art installation, this enables it to gain publicity through exhibitions in art galleries.

The installation demonstrates how people with severe learning difficulties can be integrated into the broader society. At the same time, these people are encouraged to use modern computer information technology, which is becoming a necessity also for this group of users. Ethical issues regarding how this group of people can get involved in such work are also discussed.

Combining the habituation of people with severe learning difficulties with computer technology in the form of a game, and framing the whole process as a fine art undertaking, to win the public recognition, is a novelty in addressing the needs of these people.