Art Therapy Research Paper Highlights

In my paper “Art Therapy as An Intervention for Children Facing Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder” I wrote about the ways in which art therapy is used to help children under eighteen suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder within a creative space where children can process their trauma. I discussed how art therapy has diverse mediums of expression that don’t have to be verbalized to be understood, and how symbolism plays a huge role for art therapists because making art is a cognitive process that an art therapist would use symbolism to uncover. I went into what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is and its harrowing effects on children’s lives, too. The mental health disorder impairs a child’s ability to interact socially leading to occupational dysfunction and is accompanied by life-long intense, dream-like flashbacks.

One of the assessments I used as an example of an art therapy assessment was Linda Gantt’s Formal Elements Art Therapy Scale- or the F.E.A.T.S. scale. I discussed how her scale ranks from zero to five and measures six subjects: implied energy, space, realism, detail of object and environment, and line quality. When using this scale, an art therapist should approach the child’s artwork as if they did not know what the image is supposed to be or represent.

One of the art interventions I studied was under the umbrella of art therapy, the creative arts therapy of poetry. I found out that poetry was the only form of creative arts therapy throughout every study I read that consistently and significantly alleviated the children’s depression. I discovered this beautiful process of catharsis when researching about how when children suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder write poetry, they are able to take their initially abstract memories and turn them into manageable symbolic expressions on paper.

One thing that surprised me was just how affective art therapy is for children with Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder- I knew that it had helped me when I was young, and still does today, but every study mentioned how important art therapy was to the children, too. Often times they’d want to return for a final, optional session after their initial therapy had stopped, and every art therapy intervention alleviated the children’s more serious symptoms like nightmares, anxiety/depression/paranoia, and substance abuse.