The profession of art therapist is not a new one, but it is one that is not familiar to many people. Art therapists are professional therapists who have extensive training in both art and psychotherapy. In order to be an art therapist, a person must hold a master’s degree in either art therapy or a similar field. This knowledge and education allows an art therapist to help patients identify emotional problems through artistic mediums.

Most patients of art therapy are able to cope with their problems like stress and personal trauma. Art therapists can bring out in a patient the ability to gain insight into their own minds and feelings, as well as boosting the patient’s ability to establish and maintain healthy relationships. All of these things are important parts of healing, and art therapists are trained to use the artistic processes of the mind to bring these results out of their patients.

Who Is The Art Therapist? is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide

Art therapists, like other therapists, use several different therapeutic processes to analyze and treat emotional problems in their patients. Unlike other therapists, however, art therapists’ have therapeutic techniques that center on having the patient create and interpret art pieces. This can help the patient gain personal insight as well as help them to address personal issues.

Some of the techniques used are interpreted by the art therapist instead of the student. In these techniques, the patient’s art is analyzed according to the colors, shapes and designs used. Some techniques are used to determine the current psychological state of the patient; these techniques generally involve the patient choosing geometric shapes and then recreating them. Other techniques involve the patient drawing specific pictures and then explaining the pictures; these techniques give the art therapist clues to the personality of the patient.

Therapeutic Processes in Art Therapy is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide

Art therapy in the schools involves professional art therapists along with preschoolers, children, adolescents, teachers, and families. The art therapist is specifically trained to recognize a struggling student’s emotional issues that are preventing them from learning. Other things, such as learning disabilities or language/speech disorders, can also be evaluated along with behavioral disorders and mental illness.

The reason art therapy in the schools works so well is because very few children of any age can resist the art-making processes–a blank piece of paper, the smell of new crayons, the feel of clay, and the visual impact of the moving watercolors. The art therapist can take this artwork and diagnose problems from it, providing certain appropriate interventions that may be needed along with specific services to assist the child in his or her developmental learning.

Some of the advantages of art therapy in the schools are the provisions of visual and verbal approaches in order to address certain child needs. An assessment by the art therapist involves giving the child or adolescent five or six art assignments, using different media. The ideas behind this is to have the child or adolescent perceive their family, themselves, their school, their friends, or anything in their environment and then apply this perception to their artwork.

Once finished, the artwork is evaluated through the art therapist, head of the art therapy in the schools program. Also evaluated is the individual’s academic history in connection with their development and family. Art therapists are trained to recognize cultural spectrums, using the artwork as an assessment evaluation in relation to the culture they are from.

Art therapy in the schools recognizes that all children’s drawings are divided up into certain stages. An advantage, it is pretty easy to distinguish when a child is behind their age level. Autism is the only separate condition when the child will be ahead of their age level, which would be easily recognized by their artwork. Children with learning disabilities have advanced creative and visual intelligence for art, yet demonstrate lower scores on the standardized tests.

It is during this level of artworks and their diagnosis that the artwork of the child or adolescent will begin to show a certain amount of deviation, depending on the amount and type of internal conflict that is present. This will be represented through the drawing style and the individual’s developmental level. One connecting example would be ADHD, where heavy coloring would represent the over-activity, yet appear small in some form of classroom setting.

The reason art therapy in the schools is important, is due to the safety levels held within the school systems for the child. Many do not have safe environments, or feel secure about themselves–school is their “other family” and the artwork is able to represent what that person is feeling inside.

Art Therapy in the Schools–Does it Work? is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide

Most people do not get into art therapy for the sake of art therapy jobs, but because they enjoy art, psychology, working with all ages of troubled individuals, and feel an inner satisfaction of helping someone onto a better life. But the Art Therapist has been listed as one of the top 10 “hot jobs” which began in 2007.

A lot of the art therapy jobs belong to the mental health in combination with the educational profession, now part of a new cutting edge job philosophy based on demographic shifts, legislative changes, business trends, and consumer behavior factors. The changing employment market is becoming more and more versatile as other factors are brought into effect–people are living longer and working more years, they have access to higher education and in a multitude of methods, and later retirements–all taking the work force into an extended future as compared to the past.

According to Paula Howie, President of the American Art Therapy Association and board certified Art Therapist, has recently said in regard to art therapy jobs, ” Employment opportunities for art therapists in healthcare, community agencies, education, and independent practice continue to increase for our members. It is exciting that leading job recruitment services are recognizing the field of art therapy as a cutting edge career.

Another individual, Dr. Ellen G. Horovitz, the director of the Graduate Art Therapy Program at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. She is also on the board of Directors for the American Art Therapy Association (AATA), and has been a leader in the art field since the early 70s. She feels that art therapy jobs responsibilities will vary in each position, such as working as a consultant, in a private practice, or in an agency. The private practice in the art therapy jobs, where the art therapist provides the primary care for the patient, will be much more complex and extending a lot further than in a group. Many people may become involved because of the distressed individual’s situation–physicians, social workers, judges, law guardians, family members, and community members.

The art therapist can expect a salary that ranges from about $35,000 to $70,000 annually in the field of art therapy jobs, depending on whether one is in a private practice or in a group setting. These jobs vary in their positions and responsibilities, from the human service and art therapy field to an advertised art therapy position. But for those who wish to extend their qualifications, adding knowledge in other areas besides just art therapy is wise. This could be music therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, or anything else that would work with the art therapy field.

The Future of Art Therapy Jobs is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide

By the time the art therapy programs have been chosen in the Art Therapy school of choice, students should have already declared this their major primary field of study, which is considered the most important decision they will ever make. According to one college, the Ursuline College Graduate pre-requisites, many prerequisite courses will have been already completed in college to qualify for upper-level courses, with a Bachelor’s degree in art, psychology, behavioral science, social science, or a related field already acquired before art therapy programs can begin.

Schools that teach art therapy programs require the student to show evidence of their ability to do graduate work in the art therapy field. Not a simple field, this requires a 3.0 grade point average or above, which is based on a 4.0 system. The reason for this is because anything as a high school freshman (or 9th grade) and on up will be added to the cumulative GPA, which will effect the outcome of the schools seeking admittance to, and the scholarships being applied for. When applying to a school which teaches art therapy programs, this will have great impact on whether or not the student will be accepted.

Art therapy programs have quite a few prerequisites, which make art therapy classes easier to understand and to apply to one’s ability to learn. One such group of prerequisites to art therapy programs is a completed minimum of 18 semester hours in studio art–drawing, painting, clay or sculpture. Another is a minimum of 12 semester hours in Psychology, a prerequisite that involves four areas: General Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Personality or Counseling Development, and Abnormal Psychology or Psychopathology. And last but not least is some experience in a human service context field working with people on some level.

U.S. News has a partial list of 26 Art Therapy Schools which have quality art therapy programs under a national listing of the top “America’s Best Colleges 2008″ list. When choosing the college major for a future in art therapy, working with people of all types, ages, and backgrounds will be part of the job description. Working in art therapy uses visual artistic expression by the client to allow them to safely express hidden emotions and to explore their personal problems. The end result can enable them to achieve positive change in their lives, combined with personal growth. The major difference in art therapy, as compared to traditional psychological therapies, is that it consists of a three-way process. This process is combination of efforts between the client, therapist, and the artwork itself.

Art therapy programs have professionals to train the prospective art therapist to work in many different ways. Some of these ways are to work with other professionals as a team; assess the individual needs of the client; listen to them and provide guidance; work creatively with them in a therapeutic setting; enable the client themselves to explore their own creativity, their art work, and its process; and most important, maintain the latest research and new ideas regarding the latest developments of art therapy.

What About Art Therapy Programs? is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide

Art therapy projects are short-term art therapy events that students and board-certified art therapists actively create to encourage a wide range of community partnership, assessing the art therapy project’s objectives and its end result. Many other individuals can be involved in it, such as social service for the individual and family, community centers and healthcare, educational school systems, corporations, and alternative sites.

New York’s “Village Voice” printed an article, “Battling Mental Illness with a Paintbrush,” on how a special art therapy project is helping the mentally ill, with Judith Raskin-Rosenthal’s Gallery 300. Clients of an organization called The Bridge, Inc.”, 61 of her student’s works were hung on the walls. These clients belonged to a mental-health agency on West 108th Street, calling themselves the Bridge Group Artists. Disorders such as bipolar disorder, physical disability, and schizophrenia are just a few of the client’s conditions which have leased a new life with their art work. Each artist had their own style, saying their own message, with the hopes of selling their work to supplement their meager incomes.

Special projects involve specific art therapy projects, with a multitude of goals involved for not only the community but also the students involved in the art therapy projects. Another such example is an Art Therapy Project in the Bellevue Hospital by Valerie Sereno, M.A., ATR-B-C, Coordinator, Special Programs and Projects. This project had several goals involved in their art show between the art students, their art therapists, and the community:

Providing addition experience in the artistic field, in addition to diverse client contact to the art therapy students.
Promoting community partnership and collaboration.
Introducing art therapy benefits to specific programs and populations that are totally unfamiliar with art therapy projects.
Educating institutions, agencies, the public, and financial supporters about the extensive applications of art therapy and art therapy projects.
Providing creative and therapeutic opportunities for social interaction, communication, expression and emotional development.
Establishing partnerships with new organizations generating future placements, resources and employment for students.
Promoting the SVA Master Program in Art Therapy Projects.

Most of the art therapy projects involve themselves with the community they belong to, considering itself its strongest member who acts as a force for positive social change. Some art therapy projects for unique ideas are Community Art Programs for Children, Art for America Benefit, Bellevue Hospital: Adult Rehabilitation Unit, Long Island College Hospital: Partial-Hospitalization Psych Unit, New Alternatives for Children: Children with Chronic Illness and Disabilities, Fight Against Childhood Epilepsy and Seizures, Early Childhood Therapeutic Learning Center for Foster Care, Catholic Charities, and Residential Substance Abuse Rehabilitation for Teens.

The Exposure of Art Therapy Projects is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide

Once art therapy became part of the psychotherapeutic modality, another avenue opened up for healing–Art Therapy Schools. Visual expression prior to the 1940s was based on the artist’s ability to clearly express themselves, using techniques dating back to the Paleolithic era and the first cave art.

Two entirely separate things, art and healing, both complemented each other but were basically not connected as a distinctive professional tool, that is until the development of art therapy. Art Therapy Schools were then begun, as the interest in the field became popular with children with a developing ability to reach the darkest recesses of the human mind. Up until then, their trauma and crisis had been tackled by traditional talk therapies that had been used with anything short of success.

Art Therapy Schools are on the rise due to the combination of traditional psychotherapeutic theories and techniques that work in diverse populations, such as children, adolescents, and adults. Art therapy works because it is healing, because it works through traumatic issues–by using a person’s subconscious creativity in their drawings, paintings, photography, sculpture, and even their writing. Their underlying feelings combined with subconscious thoughts help the clients gain better insight about what has happened to them, assisted by professional art therapists and Art Therapy Schools.

Art Therapy Schools train individuals in the field of psychological assessments in order to administer and interpret them. Not a new thing, in 1906 a German psychiatrist by the name of Fritz Mohr created the world’s first drawing assessment for the purpose of psychological purposes. Right after that in 1926, a researcher by the name of Florence Goodenough created a way to measure the intelligence of children with the Draw-A-Man-Test, whereas the more details the child being tested could incorporate into the drawing–the smarter they were.

C.J. Jung once said, “The hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect struggles in vain.” With this in mind, the Art Therapy Schools are simply another piece of the puzzle when it comes to working with emotional conflicts on many levels of the mind. And when it comes to working with children or adolescents who are troubled and have many issues, art therapy helps to identify and reconcile such things. Visual art processes are used as the primary modality for treatments and assessments, whereas art education teaches the children or adolescents to produce and evaluate their own art work, not analyze what message it is subconsciously saying.

Schools and other institutions that work with troubled individuals share responsibilities, with the art therapist participating as a member of the treatment group. The goal of this group is to successfully assist in the development of a meaningful identity for the troubled individual.

Developing Modality of the Art Therapy Schools is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide

When it comes to promoting a business in massage therapy, using clip art for massage therapy is the cheapest and wisest way to go. If this does not sound accurate, check out the price for good quality original artwork, unless that massage therapist is also an excellent artist who does his or her own clip art. Once this is done, it will become quite apparent that high quality clip art for massage therapy is more than a bargain.

The only problem with choosing good clip art for massage therapy is there is too much to pick from. Considered as pre-made images to illustrate any graphic arts medium, almost anyone in advertising or business uses clip art anymore. Not including stock photography the majority of the time, clip art is usually done by hand or by computer software. Available in black and white, or in full color, the term “clip art” originally began when people cut out certain images from pre-existing art work to form a new piece of art work.

With so much to pick from, it is difficult to pick the “right” type of clip art for a person’s advertising to promote their massage business, unless they know what they want to say and how to say it. Many styles and concepts are used, such as humorous, serious, illustrative, wood block, sketchy, abstract, realistic, and so on. The main thing is to choose the type of clip art for massage therapy that illustrates an idea or tells a story–contributing a specific meaning to a certain message that the message owner wants to send out.

Learning to use visual language in addition to wordage will make a person better equipped to expand their message business. Using borders and background as decorative elements to break up space, using diversity that is like none others, along with many other ways to send out a message while using clip art for massage therapy ideas include:

Visual Puns – one or two possible meanings can be portrayed by one or two symbols.
Symbol – using a visual image of something that is invisible.
Sign – the use of a shorthand device that actually stands for something else.
Metaphor – a likeness between two ideas portrayed by a likeness
Icon – image used to suggest a meaning
Clich – an image with a widely understood meaning.

Many artists and designers have said, “If concept is what you say, style is how you phrase it.” This is the reason one artist can come up with so many different ideas for one simple meaning. But in truth, professional designers do not have the magic formula to make their work better than another one does. They only can communicate the message better, using art and words alone.

Using Clip Art for Massage Therapy is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide

It is difficult to look at the history of art therapy and its true meaning until one goes back to the history of the visual arts, where art was not art but was considered a trade or workmanship by the general mass or tradesmen. Artistic symbols were used as visual records of self-expression and communication. And even though ancient healing involved art in a multitude of forms and ideas, the history of art therapy was non-existent over the centuries until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, yet art was not.

The first men to apply art therapy to their psychiatry field were Ambrose Tardieu and Paul-Max Simon. French psychiatrists, they published studies regarding the artwork of the mentally ill. Looking at similar characteristics and symbolism of the patient’s artwork, these men viewed the developing history of art therapy as one of the best effective diagnostic tools in order to identify a specific type of mental illness or traumatic event of the time.

Later on, Margaret Naumburg incorporated the field of art into psychotherapy in order for her own patients to visualize and recognize their unconscious state of mind. Using this form of psychological counseling, she founded the Walden School in the year 1915 to apply her findings to her student’s artwork. To this day, she is considered the actual founder of art therapy in the United States, after publishing quite heavily on the subject and teaching art therapy seminars at the New York University in the 1950s. From this moment on, the history of art therapy had a new beginning that would lead to a guarantee of its success.

Deeply rooted in the theories of Freud and Jung, both the conscious and subconscious play a major part in the two part process of art therapy–the creation of art and having its meaning discovered. The history of art therapy has shown that visual images and symbols are easily accessible to the human mind, and is considered to be the most natural form of communication. Each patient, regardless of their problem or age, is encouraged to visualize something in their mind they cannot talk about, yet have strong feelings and emotions about it. The art therapist then reviews it to have the patient interpret it.

As the field of art therapy progresses, it is centered on visual mediums, and is mainly used in the mental health treatment. But it can also be used with traditional medicine in order to treat organic diseases and conditions. It is documented over the years through the history of art therapy that art therapy allows the patients to develop their own style of coping skills, and promotes healing by relieving their stress.

The History of Art Therapy is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide

Clip art has quickly become an acceptable usage for sound concepts, high-quality illustrations, and the quality of its execution. It has to say what is wanted and how it needs to be represented–immediately. Massage therapy clip art represents a new field of healing and stress reduction, with the massage practitioners using it to promote their business. Business people are not usually professional artists, but they need to grab the attention of prospective clients into the massage area.

The massage therapist needs to inform the public they are knowledgeable about their profession, what type of skill level they have, and inform the general public of their accessibility. Using quality massage therapy clip art along with quality educational and advertising programs can do just that, if it is done properly. Well-conceived and carefully implemented marketing devices have the potential to help a business grow.

The average person who goes to a massage therapist for medical benefits or even relaxation purposes, do not realize that they can specialize in over 80 different types of massages. And that massage can last as long as two hours on down to five or 10 minutes, depending on the needs of the client. Massage therapy clip art needs to represent this in a simplest of ways, with the most quality and accuracy as possible without imitating similar products and services. And actually, the only difference in marketing methods is the method used to win over a new client.

In order to achieve a qualified response from a prospective massage client, using words with power and unique phrases are good, but used in combination with massage therapy clip art is better than good–it is excellent. People do not pick up an ad and say, “HmmmI wonder what this says?” But they do respond immediately to some form of artwork, whether it is an illustration, photograph, or graphic design. And this will depend on the targeted marketing field.

Those with limited imagination will use mediocre sales gimmicks, using bold and large brightly colored letters to “slam” the mind with force–making a person READ their ad. This type of ad is used through un-requested pop-up Internet ads, Spam mail, or whatever can forcibly be used to an unsuspecting audience in a mass scale. But a quality ad with massage therapy clip art pertaining only to the message, can also be an extremely forceful ad.

Unfortunately, not everyone in the newly developing massage field has competitive advantages. Instant profits can only be successfully achieve if they are marketed accurately and with style, with that style representing the general mass or a targeted audience. An ad for massage therapy would not be received well by someone who is campaigning against different natural health fields. But it can be received well by those already in the natural field, or by a high stress industry that is seeking ways to reduce stress in its business. Using massage therapy clip art and the power of quality words toward a particular target are an art field in itself, achieving success on many levels.

Using Massage Therapy Clip Art is a post from: Alternative Medicine Guide