The process of creating art is often an emotional one, and viewing art often evokes strong emotional responses too; this is one reason why art therapy is such an effective tool in the psychotherapist’s repertoire. Receiving the diagnosis of a potentially life-limiting illness such as cancer, HIV, or multiple sclerosis is a traumatic experience, and the ongoing physical and mental health issues associated with such a diagnosis are equally traumatic. For people within life-limiting illnesses, some form of therapy is often recommended to help them come to terms with the diagnosis; in both the short-term and the long-term, art therapy can be an important part of this process.

Why Art Therapy?

Art therapy is a relatively recent innovation in the world of psychotherapeutic medicine, but since its use was popularized in the latter half of the twentieth century, it has become a useful tool in a wide variety of situations. According to the American Art Therapy Association, it features prominently as a therapeutic method in the treatment of mood disorders and neurological conditions ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, to autism and Asperger’s syndrome.  It takes time to come to terms not only with the fact of having a life-limiting illness, but also with the many ways in which it changes peoples’ lives. Often, it’s also very difficult for someone who has been diagnosed with such an illness to articulate how they feel about the changes in their life, and more importantly, the fact that their life may end much sooner than they had ever expected. Art provides a way of dealing with and expressing these feelings that doesn’t require verbal articulation, and that makes it a potent therapeutic tool.

There are several other reasons why art therapy can be particularly beneficial: perhaps the most important is simply that creating art is both an enjoyable and a life-affirming process. Another very useful aspect of art therapy is that it doesn’t require specialist art equipment—inexpensive school-grade art supplies are all that is needed for a beginner, and the artist always has the option of upgrading to higher quality supplies if he or she wishes.

How Art Therapy can Help

According to the UK’s St. Elizabeth Hospice, for someone with a life-limiting illness, diagnosis and treatment is something of an emotional roller-coaster, and it’s a time of great stress for a patient, and for his or her family and friends. It’s difficult for the person with the illness to talk about the effect the illness is having, because they’re often worried about putting additional burdens on the people closest to them. As all artists know, the process of creating art is in itself very rewarding, regardless of the medium that is used; it can express emotions of sadness, anger, and loss, as well as faith, hope, and love. For someone with a life-limiting illness, all of these emotions come thick and fast, and it’s hard to make sense of them. Art therapy can provide an outlet for these feelings, and working with an art therapist either privately or in a group setting provides a safe place to express what they’re feeling.

A typical art therapy session, whether in a private setting or in a group, involves a portion of time spent working on art projects, and an interpretive period spent talking about what each piece portrays. Art therapy projects can be small and simple—such as a series of line drawings, each of which represent a specific emotion—or complex works that are completed over days or weeks. An example of a larger project might be an altered book, a project which involves the transformation of an old book with new pictures, text, and found objects. Altered book-making is an increasingly popular tool for art therapists, as it lends itself very well to ongoing therapy, and the nature of the project itself is one that perfectly embodies the theme of rewriting personal narrative.

As noted by to and grief therapist Cher Cushen, exploring illness and pain through the medium of art allows us the opportunity to understand their meaning, and the chance to turn the painful side of life into something of lasting beauty. For someone with a life-limiting illness, for example, such projects are a way of taking the pain and fear of diagnosis and taking charge of those emotions and channeling them into the production of a work of art.