Mental health awareness week: The benefits of art therapy

Art therapy is growing in popularity for people of different ages. Photo / Rahul Jain

Looking after your mental health can be a lot of fun.

This is the message of the region's art therapists.

Art therapy is a creative approach to mental health that has been growing in popularity in the Bay of Plenty and around the world.

Art therapist Dione Davies has clients in Rotorua and Tauranga. Photo / Supplied

Art therapist Dione Davies holds therapy sessions online for clients in Rotorua, Tauranga and other parts of New Zealand.

Davies said art therapy was a good option for people who were not ready to talk about their struggles in mental health or life in general.

"Talking does not help everyone. But everyone can make marks."

Davies said art therapy helped encourage different ways of expressing what was going on in her clients' lives.

"You might say you felt like a dragon. I'll say, 'Let's talk about that dragon'. Can we draw the dragon?

"We use metaphors but it's all about the meaning behind the picture."

Davies said her aim was to help her clients, who were of different ages, to "generally feel better".

"Having a creative practice, being able to be creative in your life is a really good thing for living a balanced life.

"Generally as kids we were creative but the world has squeezed it out. I'm trying to help people find that again in dance, writing stories, hitting things into wood, whatever."

Davies said art therapy was really accessible and it helped people understand the journey was more important than the destination.

"Line drawing on lined paper can be just as powerful as a big painted piece."

Whitecliffe College School of Creative Arts Therapies co-head Amanda Levey said she thought part of the reason why people like art therapy was that it was not problem-focused.

"It's enjoyable. It's about maximising potential and expanding people's options [for self-expression]."

Whitecliffe College School of Creative Arts Therapies co-head Amanda Levey. Photo / Supplied

Levey, who has worked in therapy and art therapy for decades, said the demand for art therapy had grown.

"Over the years, people have been more accepting of vulnerability and needing support."

Levey said as therapy came to be seen as a "positive thing" many people were looking for alternative methods of therapy that suited them well as individuals.

"People feel better if they sing a song or dance at a party so it's no stretch to see it as therapeutic."

She often thought of art therapy as "yoga but better" because the method helped to encourage change without participants having to try too hard.

Whitecliffe College School of Creative Arts Therapies co-head Deborah Green said the postgraduate creative therapies qualifications offered by the college were becoming increasingly popular.

"What we've been seeing is a rapid rise in popularity for the qualification."

Green said graduates were also finding it less of a "risk" to take the course.

"I think about 90 to 95 per cent of our graduates are working in the industry. Now, they tend to go into private practice but many of them are oversubscribed as well."

Green said the downtime caused by Covid-19 lockdowns had caused a lot of people to rethink their wellbeing, their priorities and how they spent their time.

"We're more than just brains walking around in fleshy bodies and people are waking up to that."

Tauranga-based art therapist Laura Kampen encourages her clients to use materials like crayons and Blu Tack to express themselves. Image / Supplied

Tauranga-based art therapist Laura Kampen said "doing arty things" had always been one of the ways she could work through what she was feeling.

Kampen said many of her clients, aged between 5 and 18, found art therapy less confrontational than other forms of therapy.

"It's a really great way to feel comfortable."

Kampen's speciality was in trauma therapy and she has found art therapy to be a great way to help young people process their experiences.

"In trauma, words are one of the first things to go."

Kampen said it was very important that her clients enjoyed their sessions and looked forward to therapy.

"We always start or end with something a bit more lighthearted. I want them to want to come to see me.

"Success is coming to a session and having clients who come with their own ideas of what they'd like to do that day."

Kampen said one way people could experience the benefits of art therapy in their own lives was by keeping a visual journal.

"It's not about the finished product. It's about the process.

"It sounds a little bit silly but I go back to crayons and playdough. It's familiar and we know how they work and using them can be really fun."

Kampen said more people were used to the arts as a means of "working through things".

"We listen to music to help destress. This is just another way of doing that."

Ways to practise art therapy at home:
• Put up a piece of paper on the wall next to some crayons or pastels and scribble on it randomly throughout the day
• Keep a visual diary
• Go for a walk and make a collage out of the leaves or other objects you find along the way
• Draw how you were feeling today, using one colour to represent each feeling
• Try a colouring in book
• Dance around the kitchen