Consensus for using an arts-based response in art therapy

Abstract

This article sets out to describe provisional guidelines for the art therapist using an in-session art response. Art therapists are known to use art materials to respond to patients as part of their clinical work in health care settings. Using several survey and knowledge acquisition techniques, the author elucidates what techniques are being used and then establishes a first set of guidelines for art therapists working within Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL). The guidelines are not prescriptive, but offer a range of methods based on current practice. The guidelines pull together different ideas and methods and seek clinical consensus on the validity and reliability of each statement based on clinician and service user opinions. The resulting guidelines are in keeping with the ethos of NHS clinical governance to demonstrate clearly what interventions are being applied and to what effect. These guidelines are intended as a first set of principles to support innovation in clinical practice through recognition of standards to be developed.

Keywords:

• Art response
• guideline
• mental health
• art therapy
• consensus

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the CNWL art and music therapists who made a contribution to the guidelines, the University of Hertfordshire staff who helped us to examine responsive art making in clinical practice as well as the CNWL Service User Consultation Group who assisted us with the language and structure of the guidelines.

Notes

¹ As this is a guideline, there is not sufficient space to examine theory and change hypothesis, but for the purposes of clarity the nominal group understood the term, ‘Reflecting on self and other states of mind’ to be an implicit or explicit feature of the therapy (see Fosshage, 2007; Gotthold & Sorter, 2006; Yus, 1999). In other words the therapist assumes opaqueness of mind (Luyten, Fonagy, Lowyck, & Vermote, 2012; Shai & Belsky, 2011) and can explore possibilities of the other's states of mind non-verbally or verbally. The therapist's or patient's intentional states of mind are not necessarily known to one another and therefore the ‘reflection’ is seen more as a process of exploration of self–other states of mind. The process is considered to be as, if not more, beneficial than discovering the actuality of mental states although differentiating between what is fantasised/delusional and what is real has its obvious benefits (see Allen, Fonagy, & Bateman, 2008).

² Facilitators commissioned from the University of Hertfordshire are not included in this list.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dominik Havsteen-Franklin

Biographical details

Dominik Havsteen-Franklin is Consultant in Arts Psychotherapies for CNWL NHS Foundation Trust and Head of The International Centre for Arts Psychotherapies Training in Mental Health. He is responsible for developing, implementing clinical training and leading on arts therapies research and development for CNWL. His clinical interests centre on severe mental health disorders and psychological therapies in the NHS. Email: [email protected]