Page 21 - ART FORM AND MENTAL HEALTH - Ingrid Pénzes

the formal elements representing ‘how’ it is made?
As the purpose of art therapy assessment is also to assess whether the
client may benefit from art therapy treatment, to formulate an art therapy treatment plan and to decide which art interventions are appropriate to achieve the formulated objectives, it is crucial that we gain more knowledge on the possible relationship between art form, mental health and therapeutic possibilities. We hope to provide answers to these questions that will give an empirical base for art therapy assessment.
Outline
The main research question of this dissertation is whether there is a relationship between the art form and adult clients’ mental health. In order to examine this question, we will report on a research program that consists of a series of four studies existing of nine sub studies on art therapy observation. For an overview, see Table 1.
We first wanted to examine how art therapists with different training backgrounds and perspectives on art therapy observe and assess adult clients’ mental health. We wanted to know whether art therapists, regardless of their perspective, agreed on some aspects of observing and interpreting the art form. Chapter 2 will describe a qualitative study of how art therapists conduct art therapy observation and which art materials they use. The focus is on the axes therapist – art form and art form – client of the art therapy triad (see Figure 1). Then, we will examine what aspects of the art form they observe in order to formulate an art therapy diagnosis in adult mental health. The focus here is on the axis client – art form. Nine in-depth interviews were conducted and analyzed using grounded theory methodology.
A second study will be presented in Chapter 3. In this chapter we will focus on the art-making process; the axis client – art form of the art therapy triad (see Figure 1). Specifically, it was clients’ material interaction, the way clients interact with the properties of art materials within the art-making process, that art therapists in the first study found important. The three following questions were examined: 1) is the concept of material interaction recognized as an important source of information in art therapy observation by art therapists with diverse perspectives, 2) are the categories of material interaction (inter-) related and how do they contribute to art therapy assessment, and 3) is there a relationship between material interaction
General introduction | 19
1