Page 19 - ART FORM AND MENTAL HEALTH - Ingrid Pénzes

reliability (Eitel et al., 2008; Hacking, 1999 cited in Betts, 2006; Schoch et al., 2017). The final result is that the reliability and validity of these instruments is poor at best.
There are also some integrative perspectives that emphasize the importance of the client’s art-making process as well as the art product in art therapy assessment. As to the art-making process, this perspective observes the client’s response to a variety of art materials and to structured and non-structured assignments as an expression of mental health. How clients interact with art materials within an art-making process may reflect (more or less conscious) thoughts, feelings and behavior that are otherwise difficult to express (Conrad et al., 2011; Hinz, 2009, 2015). Based on these observations, this perspective attempts to discover the ways in which clients go about completing art tasks and the aspects of their coping skills, risk taking or frustration tolerance (Hinz, 2009, 2015; Kagin & Lusebrink, 1978; Lusebrink, 2010) and to determine whether clients may benefit from art therapy treatment (Bell & Robbins, 2007; Betensky 1973; Hinz, 2009, 2015; Kaplan in Malchiodi, 2012; Kramer, 1958, 1972, 1975; Rhyne, 1973; Rubin, 1984, 1999, 2009, 2011). As for the art product, this perspective interprets the art product in terms of formal elements. Yet, in contrast to the art-based perspective, this perspective does not directly relate the formal elements to psychiatric symptoms or disorders, but rather supposes that the formal elements are the visible traces of the art-making process (Chilton, 2013; Czamanski-Cohen & Weihs, 2016; Gussak & Rosal, 2016; Haeyen, 2017; McNiff, 1992, Rankanen, 2016; Springham, Findlay, Woods, & Harris, 2012). According to this perspective, the art-making process is related to more general aspects of a client’s health. By this, this perspective integrates diverse orientations on mental health, such as humanistic, neuroscientific, developmental and gestalt orientations (Gerge & Pedersen, 2017; Hass- Cohen, Bokoch, Clyde Findlay & Banford Witting, 2018; Hass-Cohen & Clyde Findlay, 2015; Hinz, 2009, 2015; Krenge, 2015; Lusebrink, 2010; Lusebrink & Kagin, 1978). As of yet, research on this underlying rationale in art therapy is in its infancy.
All these art therapy perspectives fundamentally assume a relationship between the art form and mental health. In this research project we will question this relationship.
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