Art Therapy for Children with Autism, Adolescent Depression, PTSD, Trauma

Art Therapy is used to help men and women who are going through emotional struggles as well as individuals who are suffering from a physical illness. Art therapists can improve a person’s emotional and psychological well being by working with them in this way.

While many people are used to the positive effects of medicines on the body, sometimes we pay less attention to the warm healing effect that viewing or making art can have. We may enjoy the experience of being refreshed through art but we may not intentionally seek out physical or emotional healing by employing this method.

Art therapy may utilize many different techniques, including those employed by these artists:

• Eric Fischl watercolors
• Romare Bearden collages
• Printmaker Robert Blackburn

An art therapist knows how to use art to heal. Whether they are working with autistic children, adults who have been sexually abused or individuals or depressed, therapists can use art to guide their patient in the healing process.

Psychotherapists who use this technique are specially trained to help patients better understand their own feelings. Sometimes, an individual’s thoughts are hidden and the creative process can be used to bring them out into the open. The therapist is there to lend support to the individual as they face unconscious emotions.

People who are struggling with self esteem issues can learn more about their own strengths and have a higher sense of self by utilizing art therapy. Sometimes an adult may experience a blow to their self esteem as a result of a loss of employment, rape or molestation, serious illness such as diabetes that required the removal of a part of their body, or some other serious event.

Children experience similar emotions when they are fighting a serious illness, suffer the loss of a friend or sibling, or have their perception of their reality challenged by any other event. Even kids under four are sometimes more comfortable expressing what they are feeling through art. The aim of the psychotherapist is to help the person understand emotions that are subconscious, not to produce technically sound art, so anyone can use art therapy to get through a difficult time or grow as a person.

Adults and children who might shy away from other kinds of therapy work more readily with a psychotherapist who uses art. The individual has more control over the whole process and the whole experience is usually good for releasing stressful thoughts. People who are suffering from different forms of addiction have been able to beat their addiction by using art therapy combined with other techniques.