Why Art Therapy?

A visual story of facing challenges, overcoming adversity, and building resilience

Art Therapy Program at the Eastern Shore Hospital Center

  • Promoting a safe environment

  • Source of stress reduction

  • Fostering independence

  • How mistakes enhance creativity

  • Looking beyond limitations and building strengths

  • Facing and overcoming challenges

The resulting image is the following beautiful creation:

This image is altered from its original state for legal compliance

  • DEFINITION OF ART THERAPY: Art therapy is the therapeutic use of art making within a professional relationship, by people who experience:

    • Illness

    • Trauma or challenges in living

    • And by those who seek personal development

  • Through creating art and reflecting on the art products and processes, people can increase awareness of:

    • Understanding of Self and others

    • Coping with symptoms

    • Relieving stress

    • Processing emotions

  • Enhance cognitive abilities, promote creative self-expression, and enjoy the life-affirming pleasures of creating art

  • Therapeutic Developments in the Group Mural Project

    • Identifying strengths and personality traits by patient’s discovering their spirit animal

      • https://www.spiritanimal.info/

      • This website contains a quiz to discover one’s spirit animal based on personality, character traits, strengths, and interests. Each patient took this quiz and identified which spirit animal(s) represented themselves.

      • Patients then created and incorporated these spirit animals into the mural scene.

  • CHALLENGES

    • Identifying symbols and images that represent challenges, obstacles, and hardships

      • Patients were presented with a hand-out containing several images symbolizing challenges, hardships, and obstacles such as climbing a mountain, going through a cave and facing inclement weather (see below)

      • Patients were asked to circle any images on the hand-out sheet that symbolize challenges and hardships in their own lives.

  • OVERCOMING

    • Identifying symbols and images that represent overcoming challenges and building resiliency

      • Patients were presented with a handout containing several images symbolizing OVERCOMING challenges and building resiliency, such as reaching the top of a mountain, crossing a river and the clearing of inclement weather (See below)

      • Patients were asked to circle any images on the hand-out sheet that symbolize OVERCOMING challenges and hardships in their own lives

    • Images that patients identified which symbolized both challenges faced and overcame were then incorporated into the landscape setting of the mural