Art Therapy is a growing field that leads to a rewarding career helping clients of all ages improve their lives in meaningful ways.

Art Therapy is an integrative mental health profession that combines knowledge and understanding of:

  • visual arts;
  • the creative process;
  • human development;
  • psychology; and
  • counseling theories and techniques.

With this deep understanding, art therapists help clients improve cognitive abilities, psychological health, and sensory-motor functions.

Areas of Training

  • art therapy
  • psychotherapy
  • counseling
  • standards of practice, assessment and evaluation
  • therapy (individual, group, and family)
  • human development
  • research methods
  • multicultural issues

Helping Clients

Through the use of art media, the creative process, and often verbal processing of produced imagery, art therapists help clients manage behavior and addictions, develop social skills, reduce anxiety, increase self-esteem, reconcile emotional conflicts and improve overall wellbeing.

At 海角社区, we offer a comprehensive training program with a focus on the unique ability of art and art making to reveal thoughts and feelings, while ensuring students learn the skills involved in safely managing the reactions the creative process evokes in therapy and counseling with individuals at all stages of life.

A Growing Field

Art Therapy is a dynamic, growing career field, particularly in Maryland where Art Therapists are licensed as distinct mental health professionals (LGPAT/LCPAT) with title protection and parity. Required master鈥檚 degree training supports students becoming highly skilled, relationally oriented mental health clinicians eligible for Maryland state graduate, entry-level licensure upon completion and national, post-graduate credentialing. 

Learning Goals

Develop strong knowledge base in the discipline

Development of a strong knowledge base is grounded in the attainment of broad foundational art therapy knowledge, skills, and values rooted in culturally and developmentally appropriate psychotherapy, art processes, and understanding of creativity and metaphor, psychopathology, assessment, trauma, and socially responsive practice. Students competently relate art therapy鈥檚 historical development to contemporary practice and trends through a lens of tradition and values. Students formulate and value informed, relationship-based art therapy practices and interventions.

Develop discipline specific professional skills

Development of discipline specific professional skills includes: the capacity to examine and integrate scholarly literature, as well as knowledge of human and creative development across the lifespan, into contemporary best practices for assessment and treatment; demonstration of clinical competencies in alignment with national standards and those for licensure consideration; demonstration of basic art therapy research skills; and demonstration of sociocultural sensitivity in research, in practice, and in valuation or assessment of a client鈥檚 art process, metaphor, narrative, and symbols, helping to support all those one works with toward art-mediated growth and well-being.

Know and apply a professional ethics code

Know and apply a professional ethics code mandates students to apply ethical standards in the evaluation and implementation of art therapy scholarship, research and practice. Working within a professional ethics code also mandates that the therapeutic relationship is built of working knowledge of laws and professional ethics governing art therapy and counseling. Further, efforts toward research and practice that create community and extend inclusivity on local, national, and global levels are embraced.

Prepare for entry level career

Preparation includes effective use of supervision for professional development and demonstration of effective written, art-mediated, and oral communication, defining professional role and integrating academic learning with clinical field experiences. Additionally, robust investigation is undertaken throughout the curriculum to distill personal and professional values and aptitudes toward discernment of preferred professional setting and/or population served. Interdisciplinary work and clinical collaboration are valued as beneficial to clients and as supporting the further advancement (education/advocacy) of the field nationally and at the local level.

Contribute to the well-being of self and others

Contributing to the well-being of self and others engages students in developing a personal philosophy of art making as a means to self-understanding, well-being, and professional development. It also mandates one to identify and implement art therapy services that honor individual and group differences, promoting healing and resilience. Art therapy is understood as a socially responsive therapeutic practice through which oppressive systems might be challenged, inclusive communities built, and empowerment realized.