Highlands in Bloom is a licensed residential treatment center in Agoura Hills, California. Our clinical program is developed and overseen by Clinical Program Director Stacy McNeal, PhD, LMFT and Medical Director and Psychiatrist Dr. Todd Hill. Art therapy is an integrative creative modality offered at Highlands in Bloom that uses the visual art-making process as a therapeutic tool for emotional processing, self-expression, trauma integration, nervous system regulation, and the development of self-awareness that supports mental health and autoimmune recovery.
What Is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is a mental health profession that uses the creative process of making art within a therapeutic relationship to improve and enhance the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of individuals. Art therapy is distinct from art classes, recreational art-making, or arts and crafts activities. It is a structured clinical intervention in which the process of creating art, rather than the aesthetic quality of the product, is the primary therapeutic vehicle. Art therapy is practiced by trained and credentialed art therapists and has an established evidence base and professional credentialing standards through the American Art Therapy Association.
How Art Therapy Works
Art therapy operates through several therapeutic mechanisms that distinguish it from verbal therapeutic approaches. The act of making art externalizes internal experience, allowing clients to observe, interact with, and process emotional material that has not yet found verbal form. The creative process activates the right hemisphere of the brain, which processes emotion, imagery, and holistic pattern recognition, in ways that are not consistently accessed through language-based therapy that relies primarily on left-hemisphere verbal processing.
The distance created by the art-making process, working with emotional material through image and material rather than direct verbal disclosure, reduces the psychological defensiveness that can make direct emotional processing difficult. Clients can approach difficult material through the relative safety of metaphor, symbol, and visual representation. The art object produced also has a unique quality as a tangible, external representation of internal experience that can be returned to, reflected upon, and processed over multiple sessions in ways that verbal disclosure does not permit.
Art Therapy and Mental Health
Art therapy has clinical evidence across a range of mental health presentations including PTSD and complex trauma, depression, anxiety, grief and loss, and the adjustment challenges associated with chronic illness. For clients managing PTSD, art therapy provides a non-verbal processing modality that can access and externalize traumatic material without the direct verbal recounting that can be retraumatizing in the early stages of trauma treatment. Images and symbols created in art therapy sessions can represent traumatic experiences in a contained and manageable way that supports the gradual integration of traumatic material at a pace calibrated to the client’s regulatory capacity.
For clients managing depression, the active engagement of art-making counteracts the withdrawal and inactivity that sustain depressive states, activates reward circuitry through creative engagement and mastery experience, and provides a medium for externalizing and observing the internal landscape of depression in ways that can shift perspective and support therapeutic processing. For clients managing anxiety, the focused attention of art-making provides a present-moment grounding practice that interrupts rumination and worry, and the creative process provides a structured outlet for the mental energy that anxiety generates.
Art Therapy and Autoimmune Conditions
Art therapy’s relevance to autoimmune condition management operates through both its psychological and physiological effects. The reduction of psychological stress through creative engagement, emotional processing, and present-moment absorption in art-making directly reduces the cortisol and HPA axis activation that drives inflammatory disease activity. For clients managing lupus, fibromyalgia, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and IBD, the chronic psychological stress burden associated with living with unpredictable autoimmune disease is a significant driver of disease activity, and any intervention that meaningfully reduces that burden has direct clinical relevance.
Art therapy also provides a unique therapeutic space for the grief, identity disruption, and existential concerns associated with chronic illness. The grief of chronic autoimmune disease, the loss of the pre-illness self, the body one expected to inhabit, and the life one expected to lead, is often difficult to articulate verbally and may not have been acknowledged as worthy of clinical attention in conventional medical settings. Art therapy creates space for this grief to be expressed and processed through image and metaphor in ways that verbal therapy may not always reach.
Art Therapy at Highlands in Bloom
Art therapy at Highlands in Bloom is offered as an integrative modality within the residential program, providing clients with a creative therapeutic medium that complements the clinical work happening in individual therapy, group programming, somatic practices, and educational sessions. Art materials including drawing, painting, collage, and mixed-media approaches are available throughout the residential stay as both structured therapeutic sessions and self-directed creative practice during unstructured time. No prior art experience or artistic ability is required. The therapeutic value of art therapy lies entirely in the creative process and the emotional and psychological engagement it supports, not in the aesthetic quality of the work produced.
FAQs
Do I need to be artistic or have art experience for art therapy?
No. Art therapy requires no prior artistic experience or ability. The therapeutic value lies entirely in the creative process and what it accesses emotionally and psychologically, not in the quality of the art produced.
How is art therapy different from arts and crafts?
Art therapy is a structured clinical intervention in which the creative process is used as a therapeutic tool for emotional processing, self-expression, and psychological healing within a clinical therapeutic relationship. Arts and crafts are recreational activities focused on the product. Art therapy focuses on the process and what it reveals, expresses, and allows the client to work with therapeutically.
Can art therapy help with trauma?
Yes. Art therapy provides a non-verbal processing modality for trauma that allows clients to access, externalize, and begin to integrate traumatic material through image and symbol rather than direct verbal disclosure. This is particularly valuable in the early stages of trauma treatment when direct verbal processing may exceed a client’s regulatory capacity.
How does art therapy support mental health recovery?
Art therapy supports mental health recovery through emotional processing via creative externalization, activation of reward circuitry and present-moment engagement that counteracts depression and anxiety, non-verbal access to psychological material that verbal therapy may not reach, and the development of self-expression and self-awareness through creative engagement.
Is art therapy included in the residential program?
Yes. Art therapy is an integrative group offered as part of the residential program at Highlands in Bloom. Art materials and creative space are available throughout the residential stay for both structured therapeutic sessions and self-directed creative practice, accessible to all residential clients regardless of prior artistic experience.
Can art therapy help with autoimmune conditions?
Yes. Art therapy reduces the chronic psychological stress burden that drives autoimmune inflammatory activity through creative engagement, emotional processing, and present-moment absorption. It also provides a uniquely accessible therapeutic space for the grief and identity disruption associated with chronic autoimmune illness, allowing this often-unacknowledged dimension of autoimmune experience to be expressed and processed in a supported clinical context.
Take the First Step
Highlands in Bloom accepts clients from across California and the United States. Our admissions team is available daily for a complimentary, confidential clinical consultation. Call us at (805) 892-6313 or visit highlandsinbloom.com/contact. We are in-network with Blue Shield of California and Aetna and accept most major PPO plans.