Making art with and without patients in acute settings

Abstract

An increasing number of art therapists in the UK are making art alongside their patients. Although this practice is fairly well established in the US, it is marginalised within UK art therapy discourse. There needs to be more transparency about it so that the benefits for patients can be clarified and guidelines developed. Using vignettes from current work with disturbed patients in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit, I will describe how I use art making as a way of negotiating the particular problems of in-patient art therapy. I will argue that doing so is not only helpful for the art therapist but, more importantly, it is beneficial for the patient.

Keywords:

• Therapist art making
• acute in-patients
• open studio group
• inter-subjective
• maternal function

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Marshall-Tierney

Biographical details

Andrew Marshall-Tierney trained as an art therapist at St Albans during the mid-80s. Although he has worked with many different client groups in a variety of settings, most of his clinical experience has been in Adult Mental Health settings. Andrew also has 10 years' experience as an art therapy educator. He is currently Senior Lecturer on the MA Art Therapy at University of Hertfordshire and also works for the NHS in low secure forensic, PICU and dementia wards.