About Creative Arts Therapy

What is Creative Arts Therapy?
Creative arts therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses creative modalities, including dance, movement, drama, music and arts within a therapeutic relationship, to improve physical, mental and emotional well-being.

This therapeutic intervention is suitable for any stage of the health continuum – early intervention, health diagnoses, chronic illness, wellbeing and even developmental conditions.

Creative arts therapy helps people :

• Share a safe space and nurturing environment
• Understand and express feelings and emotions
• Develop healthy coping skills
• Improve communication skills
• Improve motor skills and physical co-ordination
• Resolve interpersonal conflicts and develop interpersonal skills
• Manage behaviour
• Reduce stress, anxiety and depression
• Increase self-esteem and confidence
• Recover and rehabilitate
• Achieve insight
• Resolve post traumatic mental stress

Creative arts therapy uses an embodied and experiential creative process to help clients explore and express unconscious material that is often difficult to articulate in words and to find new pathways to healing. A creative arts therapy session is therefore quite different to, for example, an art class.

A growing body of research evidence shows that the creative arts offer opportunities for meaning making and emotional growth while also regulating and expressing our emotions. This can be more effective than merely talking about change.

Professional recognition of Creative Arts Therapists

In South Asian communities, for many centuries, creative arts have been a well-recognised medium of holistic health. In contrast, in the euro centric part of the world (in countries such as the UK, the USA and Europe) this profession has been established and recognised since the 1940s.

Now, creative arts therapy has been recognised and regulated around the world by organisations such as the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) in the UK and the American Art Therapy, Association for Dance Movement Psychotherapy and the British Association of Dramatherapy.

As an emergent profession in Australia, New Zealand and Asia, the profession gained classification by the Australian and New Zealand Classification of Occupations in 2007. Since then, the profession and its diversity has grown exponentially, due in part to the increase in evidence and practice-based research in the field and the greater profile of the benefits of the arts in health.

In Australasia, this profession is regulated by The Australian, New Zealand and Asian Creative Arts Therapies Association (ANZACATA) as the peak professional body, and then the Dance Movement Therapy Association of Australasia (DTAA), Australian Music Therapy Association (AMTA), and the Australian Creative Arts Therapies Association (ACATA).

Increasingly, Asian countries are also recognising the value of regulating this profession. Most recently, the Indian Association of Dance Movement Therapies was formed as a national association and a professional body for Dance Movement Psychotherapists (DMP), Dance/Movement Therapists (DMT), Dance Movement Therapy Practitioners (DMTP), and Dance Movement Therapy Facilitators (DMTF) in India.

For further information, you can visit

The Australian, New Zealand and Asian Creative Arts Therapies Association
(ANZACATA)
https://www.anzacata.org/

Dance Movement Therapy Association of Australasia (DTAA)
https://dtaa.org.au/

Australian Music Therapy Association (AMTA)
https://www.austmta.org.au/

Allied Health Professions Australia (AHPA)
https://ahpa.com.au/

Psychotherapy & Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA)
https://www.pacfa.org.au/