The advantages and potential use for creative therapies in healthcare are innumerable and clearly established in both the literature and consumer accounts. Therapeutic art practices have clearly demonstrated benefits to health and well-being through relaxation, improved stress management and coping, social inclusion, recovery, personal growth, self-expression and the potential for alleviating distressing physical, emotional, and psychological symptoms. Despite strong support for the use of art therapy in healthcare by many professionals and members of the public, there has been much criticism of the intervention due to claims of insufficient evidence-base and debates regarding research practices. There is also a distinct research gap in which service users are rarely consulted regarding their perspectives on the use of art-based interventions in their own mental healthcare. The purpose of this research was to explore how psychiatric patients experience the use of therapeutic art in their psychiatric treatment, and their perception of its impact on their own mental health recovery. Focusing on the experience of art therapy from the viewpoint of adult psychiatric patients allowed the researcher an insider view to a better understanding of perceived benefits of participating creative therapies. Using Interpretive Description methods, and informed by the Recovery Oriented Model of Care, the researcher gained key insights on how current techniques and patient experiences benefit clients and their communities including improved communication, self-regulation, and enhanced intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. Gaining insight from clients directly has resulted in enhanced understanding, awareness and possible actionable interventions for clinical, educational and community settings to enrich future practice, contributing unique and unheard participant perspectives noticeably scarce in the current literature on the subject.
Keywords: art therapy, expressive arts, mental health, adult psychiatry, recovery-oriented care, nursing, Interpretive Description, creative therapies, therapeutic art, person-centered care
