Creative Arts Therapies

Abstract

The Creative Arts Therapies (CAT) is an umbrella term covering several specialized disciplines: art therapy, dance movement therapy, drama therapy, psychodrama, music therapy, and poetry / bibliotherapy. In these healthcare professions, arts-based creative and expressive processes and their products are used to improve health and well-being within a therapeutic relationship. The first part of this chapter will provide an overview of the CAT disciplines, training requirements, and the field’s history. The second part will describe the therapeutic change factors shared by all CAT disciplines. Part three will discuss evidence-based findings from CAT studies on emotional well-being including regulating and processing emotions, stress relief, depressive symptoms and grief processing. Finally, in part four, future directions for CAT research will be suggested, with an emphasis on change process research, including mechanisms of change.