Throughout the country, mental health facilities are incorporating art therapy as a part of its treatment and healing processes. Therapists employ art therapy to help people manage physical and emotional problems by using creative activities to express emotions. For many, it provides a way for people to come to terms with emotional conflicts and express unspoken, often unconscious concerns.
What does art therapy accomplish?
With therapeutic guidance and support, art making can facilitate new insights, expression of emotions, resolve conflicts, and formulate new perceptions that in turn lead to positive changes, growth and healing.
Here are the top three key benefits of incorporating art therapy:
1. Communication through symbolic language: Encourages residents to express their feelings and ideas. Says what cannot be easily put into words and allows space to develop a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.
2. Exploration of internal feelings: Guides residents through the process of considering their deepest feelings about recovery and provides a container where negative feelings and thoughts can be held outside of the person.
3. Spikes brain activity: Activates more of the brain than verbal therapy, offering additional coping and problem-solving skills. Numerous case studies have reported that art therapy can benefit patients with both emotional and physical illnesses.
The Villa Orlando and Pasadena Villa’s Smoky Mountain Lodge are adult intensive psychiatric residential treatment centers for clients with serious mental illnesses. We also provide other individualized therapy programs, step-down residential programs, and less intensive mental health services, such as Community Residential Homes, Supportive Housing, Day Treatment Programs and Life Skills training. Pasadena Villa’s Outpatient Center in Raleigh, North Carolina offers partial hospitalization (PHP) and an intensive outpatient program (PHP). If you or someone you know may need mental health services, please complete our contact form or call us at 407-574-5190 for more information.
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