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As an expressive medium, art can be used to help clients communicate, overcome stress, and explore different aspects of their own personalities. In psychology, the use of artistic methods to treat psychological disorders and enhance mental health is known as art therapy. Art therapy integrates psychotherapeutic techniques with the creative process to improve mental health and well-being. Art Therapy is a mental health profession that uses the creative process of art making to improve and enhance the physical, mental and emotional well-being of individuals of all ages. It is based on the belief that the creative process involved in artistic self-expression helps people to resolve conflicts and problems, develop interpersonal skills, manage behavior, reduce stress, increase self-esteem and self-awareness, and achieve insight. Art therapy can be used to treat a wide range of mental disorders and psychological distress
Keywords: art therapy, health
Art therapy is a relatively young therapeutic discipline. It first began around the mid-20th Century, arising independently in English-speaking and European areas. In England, as in the U.S., the roots of art therapy lay mainly in art education, the practice of art, and developmental psychology. According to David Edwards, an art therapist in Britain, numerous and often conflicting definitions of art therapy have been advanced since the term, and later the profession, first emerged in the late 1940s (Waller, 1979). Edwards states, "in the UK, the artist Adrian Hill is generally acknowledged to have been the first person to use the term 'art therapy' to describe the therapeutic application of image making. For Hill, who had discovered the therapeutic benefits of drawing and painting while recovering from tuberculosis, the value of art therapy lay in 'completely engrossing the mind and releasing the creative energy of the frequently inhibited patient' (Hill, 1948). So, the birth of art therapy goes back to the painter, Adrian Hill, who suggested artistic work to his fellow inpatients, while he was treated in a tuberculosis (T.B.) sanatorium. That began his artistic work with patients, which was also documented in 1945 in his book, "Art Versus Illness". Around the same time as Hill, U.S. pioneers Maigaret Naumburg and Dr. Edith Kramer started using art therapy. Naumburg's model of art therapy based its methods on: "Releasing the unconscious by means...