Art Therapy and Mental Health

Art therapy uses guided creative practice—drawing, painting, sculpture, and related media—as a structured clinical intervention to support emotional regulation, trauma processing, and psychological well-being across diverse patient populations, including those navigating cancer diagnosis and treatment. Its growing integration into public health frameworks, particularly through social prescribing schemes that connect patients to community-based arts activities, reflects mounting evidence that creative engagement can improve quality of life and coping capacity in ways that complement conventional medicine. Researchers are now probing the neurobiological mechanisms behind these effects—examining how art-making modulates stress responses, activates reward pathways, and supports emotional processing at a physiological level. Open questions include how to standardize outcome measures across heterogeneous interventions, and how to scale arts-based approaches equitably within healthcare systems that have historically undervalued them.

Works

39,798

Total citations

173,769

Keywords

Art TherapyPublic HealthSocial PrescribingCancer PatientsMental Well-beingCreative Arts Interventions