Carson City therapist uses art to help clients heal

A teenaged girl named Alicia, troubled by her parents’ divorce, sits anxiously in her counselor’s office, unable to talk about her feelings.

When she does try to open up, her anger builds. Her anxiety spikes. She ends up feeling worse leaving the session than when she had first come in.

Her therapist, Monica Campbell, MFT, said Alicia needed a way to manage her feelings, to feel more in control of herself.

So Campbell, a Carson City-based marriage and family therapist who practices out of the Westside Center for Counseling at 205 S. Minnesota Street, placed before her client a pencil and blank paper, asking her to draw.

Using a specialized treatment modality called Art Therapy, Campbell was able to reach Alicia and help her to deal better with her problems.

“The art process helped her to manage her anxiety,” Campbell said. “The art she created helped her to view her thoughts and feelings as a creation, rather than something uncontrollable that was happening inside of her.”

Alicia is a case study Campbell uses to illustrate the effectiveness of Art Therapy. The client’s real identity and the details about her therapy are, of course, privileged.

But real people of all ages and backgrounds have benefited from the Art Therapy that Campbell uses as part of her practice.

The American Art Therapy Association (AATA), a nationwide organization sanctioning the practice of Art Therapy, defines the modality as the use of art media, the creative process, and resulting artwork to explore feelings, reconcile emotional conflicts, foster self-awareness, manage behavior and addictions, develop social skills, improve reality orientation, reduce anxiety, and increase self-esteem.

The goal, according to the AATA, is to improve or restore a client’s functioning and his or her sense of personal well-being.

“There is no art experience necessary,” Campbell said. “Art therapy is used for anyone who wishes to try a non-verbal approach to addressing and feeling better from most mental health issues.”

Professional artists themselves have long known the therapeutic value of their art. From Da Vinci to Warhol, art through the centuries has provided limitless insight into psyche, challenging us to confront our humanity.

It’s no wonder, then, that art has evolved over time from mediums of creative expression into its own healing modality used to treat mental and emotional disorders.

The AATA states that Art Therapy is appropriate for a range of individuals, from those suffering from illness or trauma to those seeking personal enrichment and growth.

“Art Therapy is effective with individuals across a broad spectrum of mental health issues and all ethnic, social and economic populations,” Campbell said. “Art Therapy transcends cultural and language barriers so therapy can be administered to individuals who may not otherwise receive it if those barriers are present.”

Campbell said there are two primary benefits to Art Therapy, categorized into “art as therapy” and “art object as therapy.”

When a client experiences improvement from art as therapy, making art leads to better emotional management and stability, she said, while also decreasing anxiety.

“It enhances mindfulness,” Campbell said, “awareness of and focus on the here and now.”

When the art object becomes the therapeutic focus, clients can develop a better understanding about their experiences, she said, allowing them to glean greater meaning from the artwork.

Another benefit of art object, Campbell said, is the ability of clients to better define the space between themselves and their problems.

“The art object also allows an individual some mental and emotional space as it were,” she said, “because we make something representing our experience, it is now ‘on the outside’ of us and it gives us greater objectivity.”

How Art Therapy works is an exact science, complete with case studies like Alicia and other research that have resulted in the modality becoming not only a legitimate means of treatment, but one that’s growing in use among therapists as well.

“Art Therapy bypasses cognitive processing,” Campbell said. “The art-making process is generated by the right hemisphere of the brain, allowing individuals an additional way to express and understand their experience.”

The AATA currently has 40 chapters in 34 states, according to its web site, representing more than 5,000 professional art therapists nationwide.

Art Therapy is widely practiced today in broad clinical settings from hospitals and rehabilitation facilities to schools, wellness and crisis centers.

This does not mean, however, that Art Therapy is readily available to most people in most areas, Campbell said.

“You see a higher number of art therapists in larger urban areas than in a rural community like Carson City,” she said.

In fact, Campbell is one of only a few counselors around the entire region who incorporates Art Therapy into her practice.

Around the Nevada state capital, there are even fewer Art Therapy practitioners besides Campbell, who said that, until only recently, finding a counseling professional that specializes in Art Therapy here was next to impossible, because credentialing requirements mandate clinical supervision by an art therapist.

“It takes an art therapist to make an art therapist, meaning you must obtain supervision in art therapy by a supervising art therapist,” she said. “If you choose to move away from an area and can't find an art therapist nearby, you can't get that supervision.”

But now both the supervision component and general credentialing program can be earned through distance education, she said, making the process more convenient for therapists to become Art Therapy practitioners.

“The Art Therapy Credentialing Board has recently changed it to where you can obtain distance learning to get your Art Therapy Registered certification,” she said. “I am only now going for my ATR because of this change. Prior to that, supervision was unavailable to me.”

To learn more about Art Therapy and its benefits, visit the AATA’s web site here.