Art Therapy

ART IS A HEALING ACTIVITY

Art-Assisted Therapy

Therapies that tap into your creative side can help alleviate symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress, and pain and help you manage these feelings both physically and mentally while also even boosting your immune function.

BECOME MORE EDUCATED ABOUT UNIQUE THERAPIES

What is Art Therapy?

Art therapy is similar to music therapy in that it shares the same sounding belief that the creative process involved in artistic self-expression can help you resolve conflicts and problems and reduce stress.

The uses of art therapy range from helping war veterans, people with anorexia, people who have experienced abuse or trauma, and people who have struggled with addiction. Art therapy has been a significant part of holistic treatment since the 1940s, practiced by professional, licensed, and certified art therapists who not only understand art therapy but its relationship to human behavior, psychotherapy, and mental health.

Art therapy is practiced in a wide variety of settings, including psychiatric facilities, schools, senior community homes, crisis centers, hospitals, and drug rehab facilities. Uses of art therapy can extend to individual and group sessions, outpatient art therapy, or inpatient art therapy.

With outpatient art therapy, part of your ongoing outpatient rehab involves working with an art therapist on customized projects designed to meet your needs. With inpatient art therapy programs, you work with an art therapist individually or as a group as part of your daily schedule while in rehab.

Your art therapy session doesn’t involve sitting down and talking about your feelings or struggles in either setting but rather creating and discussing art. This creation process allows for better communication for many people than simply sitting in a group setting and being asked to talk about fears and anxiety.

Prevail Recovery Center provides addiction treatment and holistic therapies, including art therapy programs. Contact us today to learn more about our art therapy programs for mental health and addiction treatment.

THE PROS OF ARTISTIC THERAPY

What are the Benefits of Art Therapy

Numerous case studies have found that an art therapy rehab program benefits people with emotional and physical illnesses.

Some case studies with younger individuals have found that art therapy treatment can be useful in recovering from eating disorders, sexual abuse, or severe injuries.

Studies with adults who use start therapy found that it can be particularly useful in overcoming grief, bereavement, and addiction. Art therapy has been found to:

engage attention helping you to focus on the present moment instead of looking to the past or the future
provide pleasure, especially when other things no longer do so
improve neuropsychiatric symptoms, social behavior, and self-esteem

ART THERAPY IN YOUR AREA

Are There Art Therapy Programs Near Me

No matter where you live, you can find art therapy programs that help you achieve all of these benefits and do so from the comfort of a supportive natural environment. Prevail Recovery Center offers art therapy programs in Fort Lauderdale and Knoxville, designed to be part of your comprehensive rehab program.

At Prevail Recovery Center, we specialize in a wide range of evidenced based practice and holistic treatments to give you the most comprehensive recovery possible. Treating addiction requires more than just treating the physical dependence you have on a substance; it extends to treating who you are as a person inside, how you feel, think, and act. Treating your mind, body, and spirit as one is our mission. With art therapy, we can give you the skills to relax your mind enough to better appreciate who you are as a person, reinstate control in moments when it feels like you have none, and help heal your mind while also targeting your addiction.

Prevail Recovery Center offers art therapy and outpatient addiction treatment in South Florida.

Can Art Therapy BeUsed in Addiction Treatment?

An art therapy rehab program is a common part of addiction treatment. With art therapy, you get to enjoy a higher level of comfort, putting distance between yourself and your current struggles, addiction, or experiences. In many cases having that distance makes it much easier to talk about what you’ve gone through or what you are feeling in the present. Art therapy gives you a safe space where you can focus on expressing yourself creatively.

You don’t necessarily need to immediately open up with emotional issues and discuss what you’ve gone through, what you have cells, and how your trauma, addiction, or abuse has affected you. Instead, you can use different art therapy programs to process these emotions in an alternative way. For example, art therapy can help you confront levels of low self-esteem brought about by addiction when you find a medium that helps you express yourself. When you find a medium you like and invest your creative energies into it, whether it’s painting, clay, coloring, or something else, you take back more control and build self-esteem slowly and steadily.

Art therapy can make you forget about all your problems and think about things totally unrelated to your addiction.
Art therapy can be very enjoyable even if you have no experience as an artist, and it can lift your spirits when you are struggling the most.
Keeping your mind on things like art can be inspiring.
Art therapy is an excellent way to remind you that you are still alive, a person, and you have strength, creativity, and control within you.

Art therapy in South Florida can take many forms. Art therapy might include drawing with colored pencils, painting, coloring, pottery, or card making. Playing around with finger paint and modeling clay can help physically release the pent-up tension you might hold in your body. It also helps to connect you to your deeper feelings.

In some smaller studies, artists might teach group classes for individual classes where you get to choose whether you want to color, draw, paint, or use some other medium. It doesn’t take artistic talent either. Most people in these smaller studies claimed they had no artistic talent whatsoever, and yet they were all able to find a way to express themselves using different artistic materials. Through this process, the materials help reduce stress and pain and improve the quality of life.

Today you can find coloring books with prints and patterns that are designed specifically to help people with things like anxiety. People struggling with things like anxiety can work with repetitive patterns to break their panic cycle through art therapy in South Florida.

Specific art therapy treatment projects help with different symptoms or struggles. If you are dealing with stress, anxiety, or depression, you can try things like the torn paper collage. This is really beneficial for people in recovery who feel like the stress in their lives is out of their control, and they have issues like an addiction that is in charge of daily feelings and actions. This technique lets you take charge using art materials. You take any group of paper you have, like construction paper, scrap paper, colored newspaper, and start to tear or cut shapes that appeal to you, like tiles. This helps to create a mosaic effect.

Then you let the pieces fall randomly or play around with their positions until you have an image you like, either abstract or a textured collage. You get to be in charge of the entire process, which helps you enjoy the process of tearing or cutting the pages and then creating an image. There’s no striving for perfection, no right or wrong answer; it’s a world you have complete control over, showing you that not everything in your life is outside your control, no matter how much it might seem like it.