The Effectiveness Of Art Therapy And How It Results In Happiness
The article “Does Art Therapy Work? Identifying the Activate Ingredients of Art Therapy Efficacy” states that art, itself, can help clients cope with emotional pain. Art can effectively improve one’s mental state. Author Lynn Kapitan, editor of Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, mentioned the active ingredients in art therapy and the specific properties that produce expected change or well-being for clients. She questioned if the production of a piece of art work, the process of creativity, or the use of art materials that leads to relief or change. Whether art is created on one’s own time, from instruction, in a support group or lead by an art therapist, she wondered if it makes difference for any and how does one know what works and why.
According to experiments made, few women examined whether group art therapy was the “active ingredient” that helped their psychiatric patients reduce depression. Several researchers began to test a hypothesis that art making is stress relieving. Results showed that no change was found in the level of anxiety for stress-induced undergraduate students, whereas anxiety in the art-making group decreased drastically. Kapitan took these results and experiments to question how people interpret the cause of their effects. Then questioned if certain properties of art supplies are what create the healing effects of art therapy, what about the role of therapist? Throughout the article, she questioned everything about the efficiency of art therapy and the different techniques. Regarding the lack of an art therapist, the absence of medical diagnoses, researchers witnessed a significant greater mental improvement in individuals who worked with art materials. Between the two videos watched, my article “Does Art Therapy Work? Identifying the Activate Ingredients of Art Therapy Efficacy” related more to Dan Gilbert’s video “The Surprising Science of Happiness”. Few similarities were linked between the article and the video. In Gilbert’s video, the speaker mentioned the “psychological immune system”. The psychological immune system lets us feel truly happy even when things do not go as planned. It is a system of largely non-conscious cognitive processes, but it works best when we are stuck or trapped in our thoughts. This point related back to the article because clients can go into art therapy because of their depressive thoughts, not knowing the outcome of therapy.
According to Kapitan, she assumed that making art helps clients cope with emotional stress. While the Art Therapy article stated that art therapy is efficient and works well than others that do not go to art therapy, Gilbert statef that going after something to search for happiness is something that must be found. This is called synthetic happiness, which we think happiness is a thing to be found. It is what we make when we do not get what we want. So, even though one may go to art therapy, therapy may not necessarily work for them, but create a false sense of happiness. When researching my topic, I chose the discipline of visual arts. Then furthering the topic down to art therapy and how it can relate to happiness. I questioned how effective art therapy is and how it can make one happy.
Once I got to the article, I thought it would be easy and relate to one of the videos with no problem. I chose the Dan Gilbert one because I found the article related more with the video than the Barry Schwartz. As continuing my researching of art therapy and its relation to happiness, it was hard to find similarities, differences, or any kind of comparisons. Few similarities stuck out to me; yet, I think they do not really correlate with each other. I mentioned that the psychological immune system is a non-conscious thought process, which allows us to be happy with the outcome when we do not know the results. Although we may be stuck or trapped in our thoughts, we make the most out of the situation and be happy. The main difference I found between the article and the video is the effectiveness of art therapy and if it can truly cause happiness.
As Kapitan stated with experiments and tests, she believes that art therapy is strongly effective and can significantly help clients with mental illnesses or disorders. But comparing it to Gilbert’s video, that if one goes searching for happiness and the possibility of it being found is known as synthetic happiness. Concluding, if one seeks art for a solution, they are creating a false happiness.
