What are arts therapies?

Alice Jackson: Arts therapies are a form of psychotherapy. They’re a creative, non-verbal form of psychotherapy where the emphasis is not so much on talking as in communicating through the art media.

Most psychotherapy is talking therapy, that’s a relationship with the client and the therapist, where the therapist in the main adopts a non-judgemental, empathic attitude towards the client, where the client feels safe enough to bring their difficult feelings, express them, explore them, help manage them and formulate, with the therapist, forward steps.

We do the same...the essence of what we do is exactly the same but we don’t put the emphasis on talking, which can be very good, especially for people when they are quite ill, because they can’t often put their feelings into words, and when we speak we can get judged. Whereas with arts therapies you can express a huge degree of your pain through the art form.

The four arts therapies that are available are arts therapy, music therapy, drama therapy and movement therapy.

It’s a place to express yourself creatively.

And also you can work at your pace because you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.

In an arts therapy group, or even in an arts therapy individual session, there isn’t a pressure to talk because you can spend the entire session just working on an image, you can spend the entire session just working on making movement, or playing instruments, although we do encourage talking time, we do encourage feedback on how the client felt.

There’s a great deal of self-esteem that can come from bringing something out of nothing, creating something. And obviously the groups can help because they are supported by a trained psychotherapist, who is trained in holding a space safely for the client and adopting an empathic, non-judgemental attitude towards the client.

Are arts therapies available in hospital and in the community?

On a hospital ward, and most hospital wards these days have people who are quite seriously ill, because a lot of people are seen in the community, because the turnover is quite high, people only stay a few weeks, then you can only really run open groups, and open groups are run at the same time every week, they are very boundaried, but anyone can come and go as they please.

That’s quite good for the patients because there’s no pressure on them, the door isn’t shut, there’s no pressure on them to stay the whole time, they can come and go as they please, although the therapist will try to encourage them to stay for the whole hour, because it can be a place for them to express themselves and have the support of the therapist and the other clients. But they might take it in stages, they might first of all just stand at the door and then tentatively join the group. They normally last an hour, there’s a range of arts materials, or musical instruments to play, and there’s normally about a 15 minute talking time at the end. Again, the patients don’t have to talk if they don’t want to.

Community groups will be the same people meeting each week. They go into a therapeutic contract, the emphasis is on trying to turn up every week, to have that consistency in the relationship, because if you do just go sporadically, you lose that relationship. The relationship is paramount in all psychotherapy, the relationship between the client and the therapist and the relationship within therapy if it’s a group, and that can get broken if the person just turns up ad hoc, that can disrupt relationships for the whole group, and distress the relationship with the therapist and the client. They should really try to commit to coming each week.