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Imagine that you’re a child psychologist, working with an eight-year-old boy who, mysteriously, has stopped talking. A physical examination reveals nothing abnormal. And talk therapy, obviously, is impossible. So, seeking a non-verbal way to investigate the boy’s emotional state, you bring in an art therapist—a specialist trained to use creative projects as a form of treatment—to work with your patient.
Soon, a story begins to emerge. Working with clay, the boy sculpts his family—a mother with a wide, gaping mouth, a burly father with a cigarette dangling from his lips. After several more sessions with similar results, it’s clear that the root cause of the boy’s muteness lies in a complicated, and possibly abusive, family dynamic. Through art, the therapist has begun to penetrate the boy’s psyche, opening the way for further investigation and continued treatment.
Getting through to non-verbal or otherwise withdrawn children is just one of the many applications of art therapy—a burgeoning field combining art instruction and counseling. Art has played an especially important role at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center. The Center’s CompleteLife program—a service addressing the emotional, social, spiritual and physical needs of adults with cancer—includes an artistic expression component that helps people relieve stress by painting, drawing and engaging in other art forms.
One of the Center’s most successful artistic initiatives has been the Cancer Mosaic Workshops—day-long retreats where cancer patients come together to design and build colorful tile mosaics, many of which are in display in the Center’s building.
Such projects, said Dr. Larry Cripe, associate professor in the Department of Medicine and Division of Hematology/Oncology and a physician and leukemia specialist with the IU Simon Cancer Center, “allow people to gather within a supportive community and create a marker of their experience for those who will come after them.” Art projects are valuable for cancer and other patients, Cripe said, “because they allow people to discern within themselves personal resources they may not have appreciated and to communicate to others in a way that they have not done so in the past.”
Psychiatrists and other therapists have long been interested in how art can reveal a patient’s inner state. It wasn’t until the 1940s, though, that art therapy was recognized as a unique profession.
More recently, in the past two decades, art therapy has become a common and increasingly integral part of counseling for patients battling mental and physical ailments. “Art therapy can help a full range of patients dealing with just about any issue,” Craig McDaniel, associate dean at the IUPUI Herron School of Art & Design. “Art can help patients cope with loneliness or express fears that can be hard to articulate in words.”
Art therapists typically works as part of a team that includes doctors, psychologists, nurses and mental health counselors in a wide range of settings, including hospitals and clinics, mental health agencies, halfway houses, domestic violence and homeless shelters, schools, and prisons, among others. As trained artists, art therapists are skilled at drawing, painting, sculpture and other art forms. As counselors, they use their creative skills to design and execute programs to help patients work through physical and emotional turmoil.
Indiana has a strong base in art therapy, with an undergraduate program at the University of Indianapolis, and a graduate program in music therapy at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, Now, the Herron School is in the initial stages of creating a two-year Master of Art Therapy program to train a new generation of art therapists for the Indianapolis region and beyond.
“There’s clearly a need for art therapy in central Indiana,” said Katie Hutton, director of external affairs at the Herron School. “We have some of the country’s best hospitals, many of which could benefit from highly trained art therapists.”
Art therapy is a natural fit for the Herron School, says McDaniel, given the school’s longstanding emphasis on integrating art into the community. Herron students have helped design a playground at the Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis and created public sculptures and installations for Indianapolis-area hospitals and other organizations, including the headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company.
“We see art as a fundamentally important component of life,” McDaniel said. “Founding an art therapy graduate program is an opportunity to help people whose lives are being challenged by mental and physical difficulties.”
During their final semester, students will intern at facilities partnering with the Herron School, including Riley Hospital for Children (which recently announced a plan to launch an art therapy initiative), the IU Simon Cancer Center, the IU School of Medicine, and Wishard Hospital in Indianapolis. And upon graduation, Herron-trained art therapists will also be eligible to become Indiana-licensed mental health counselors—an option, McDaniel said, that “opens an enormous range of opportunities.”
For Dr. Cripe, an influx of newly minted art therapists will be a boon for patients at the IU Simon Cancer Center. “I think art, when guided, leads to elemental and surprising things,” he said. “The cancer mosaics have been a wonderful experience of sharing and creating and leaving behind some positive part of ourselves.”
