Arts Therapies

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In Britain, art therapy is a state-registered health-care profession and its practitioners complete a postgraduate training for 2 years full-time or equivalent. The training encompasses models of psychotherapy, psychiatry, psychology, and the role and function of aesthetics and creativity in health-care. Art therapy training consists of three core elements: the theoretical underpinnings of the practice, experiential engagement in artistic and interpersonal activities (so that trainees develop their capacity for self-reflection and insight and continue to engage in their own art-making), and clinical placements. Clinical placements or internships are central to the training of art therapists, and in this way, practitioners also learn about the roles of other health professionals, the function of interdisciplinary teamwork, and art therapy’s contribution to this. State registration⁽¹⁾ of art therapists ensure that practitioners continue to maintain the standards of proficiency and professional practice established on qualification. In some other European countries such as Canada, Australia, and the USA, art therapy is also a recognized profession taught at the postgraduate level and practised within a wide range of settings. ...In UK, art therapy had its beginnings in the tuberculosis sanatoria of the 1940s, but quickly developed within psychiatric and educational settings. Integrated with other care, it has since been widely incorporated into the fields of mental health and learning disabilities. However, there is a growing interest in art therapy with the medically and terminally ill^(2–5) and one survey⁽⁶⁾ indicated that just over 6 per cent of all art therapists in UK have worked in palliative care.Less

Music therapists aim to improve comfort and ease the distress experienced by patients with life-threatening illnesses and their families by offering a range of creative musical experiences in a therapeutic relationship. The power of music to ‘move’, relieve, inspire, touch one’s sense of the individual and the universal, and transcend cognitive forms of knowing, is fundamental to music therapy’s (MT’s) impetus as a treatment modality. After delineating historical origins and defining MT in palliative care, varying aims and methods will be described. Research findings will also highlight the profession’s quest to evaluate MT’s role in ‘total patient care’. ...Less

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