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ACQ
Volume 11, Number 3 2009
ACQ
uiring knowledge in speech, language and hearing
Mental health
Sandra Drabant
(top), Maggie
Wilson (centre),
and Robert King
This article
has been
peer-
reviewed
Keywords
ART THERAPY
MENTAL HEALTH
CHILDREN AND
ADOLESCENTS
mental health setting, art making can contribute to
engagement, assessment, intervention, and treatment
as part of the recovery plan. Symbolic or visual language
is often central to the way children and teens express
themselves and they are often more at ease with this
medium than with answering questions. Contemporary
child and youth mental health services typically employ a
multidisciplinary team and a case management model of
service delivery. There are opportunities for the art therapist
to contribute both as a case manager and as part of a
therapy team. In this paper, we describe and discuss the role
of art therapy in the treatment of children and adolescents
with severe mental health problems, having reference both to
specialist therapeutic roles of art therapists and to the role of
the art therapist as a case manager.
The Mater CYMHS Day Program
Mater’s CYMHS Day Program serves young people aged 6
to 18 living with a mental illness and their families. The day
program treatment provides an intensive therapeutic milieu
throughout the day for young people who have a range of
diagnoses. The target group is young people who need
more intensive treatment than can be provided in a
community service but who do not require full inpatient care.
The young people involved in treatment attend on a daily
basis for one or more school terms and participate in
individual, group, and family therapies as well as in a school
program. Each client is allocated a case manager who may
be any member of the team, including the art therapist. The
case manager builds a strong therapeutic relationship with
the young person and also has the responsibility of
coordinating treatment. Although each young person
involved in the program has a designated case manager,
typically she or he will work closely with several members of
the multidisciplinary team.
The art therapist in multidisciplinary
psychotherapy: the Compass group
“Compass” is a group developed by the art therapist and
psychologist for the adolescent cohort at the Mater CYMHS
Day Program. This group was designed to combine
mindfulness techniques (King, 2006; Monti et al., 2006) and
art therapy to address the needs of the young people
attending the program at the time. The overall purpose of the
group was to provide a safe space for the young people to
identify and express their feelings, both visually and verbally,
and to develop a better understanding of the connection
This paper examines the role of art therapists
in a multidisciplinary team providing services
in a day program for children and adolescents
with severe mental health problems. Two
dimensions of the art therapy role are
examined. The first is the use of art therapy in
a multidisciplinary group intervention. The
second is the use of art therapy in the case
management role that integrates services for
individual clients. The specific contribution
and value of art therapy with this client group
and in this treatment setting is discussed.
W
hile writings from psychiatrists about the artwork
of their clients date back over 100 years, the field
of art therapy has formally developed only since
the 1940s. Over a period of nearly 70 years, art therapy has
developed from an adjunct to psychoanalytic therapies to
a form of intervention that can be used in partnership with
a wide range of therapies, and a stand-alone intervention
(Borowsky-Junge & Pateracki-Asawa, 1994). It can be used
in both individual and group work (Liebmann 2004; Malchiodi
2007; Waller 1993). It has also found application with
problems and in settings outside the field of mental health.
These include but are not limited to children and adolescents
in schools, physically ill and dying children, bereaved
children, people with developmental delays, and immigrants
(Wadeson, 2000).
Art therapists were initially resistant to evaluation using
standard scientific procedures but have more recently
recognised the importance both of better understanding the
processes by which engagement in art activity promotes
recovery and of establishing an evidence based for
effectiveness (Bar-Sela, Atid, Danos, Gabay, & Epelbaum,
2007; Eitel, Szkura, Pokorny, & von Wietersheim; Rao et al.,
2009).While there remains a paucity of high-quality studies
(Ruddy & Milnes, 2005), there is encouraging evidence that
participation in art therapy enhances well-being as measured
by standardised instruments (Oster et al, 2006; Svensk et
al., 2009).
Art therapy has been recognised as having particular
value in work with clients who have difficulty expressing
themselves verbally, such as refugees, children, and
individuals with specific disabilities (Rousseau & Heusch
2000; Shearer 1997; Waller, 2006). In a child and youth
Art therapy in mental
health practice
Application in a multidisciplinary day program for young
people with severe mental health problems
Sandra Drabant, Maggie Wilson, and Robert King