Arts-Based Group Therapy Research Paper

Arts-based group therapy is a form of expressive therapy that can be used with clients, so they can take a creative approach when expressing their feelings. The purpose of art-therapy as for anything a part of social work is for healing. However, art therapy allows clients to express their physical, mental, or emotional problems, diseases, and disorders, while still focusing on the creative process and the analysis of expression from patient to therapist interaction. In America, there is a significant amount of children that are exposed to traumatic events in their life. A traumatic event is considered as an event that either threatens, injures, involves death, physical integrity of self or others, and can also cause horror, terror, or helplessness at the time the traumatic event occurred. It is common for children to be subjected to more than one single traumatic event, and for those who are exposed to severe and pervasive trauma are more susceptible to experiencing the impact of future trauma. Responses to traumatic events vary, for children, their
This is important to me because, during a period in my life where my depression was an issue for me, I turned to art as an outlet and found peace while working on my projects. I was able to transfer my feelings and thoughts into my artwork, and when I wasn’t able to use my words to express how I felt, my art-work was able to do it for me. I have the first-hand experience of the benefits the arts have to help relax and calm down my anxiety. So, through my research, I will see how it can help children who have gone through traumatic experiences and explain how they can benefit from it as well. Through my findings, I hope to see if art-therapy should be utilized more throughout social work for clients to help them express their emotions and thoughts in a healthy