Art Therapy Research in Practice

Writing in accessible language, art therapy practitioners demonstrate how practice and research can mutually inform one another. They offer detailed narratives of research using various methods, such as case studies, randomized controlled trials, and clinical research that draws on historical methods. The narratives are grouped in sections on art therapy with children, people who have learning disabilities, and adults. They shed light on areas such as body image development in art psychotherapy with a blind client, the cognitive significance of image-making for people with learning disabilities, and art therapy with psychotic and schizophrenic clients. Each section ends with commentary by editor Andrea Gilroy, an art therapy educator and researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Andrea Gilroy is an experienced art therapy educator and researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she is Reader in Art Psychotherapy and Head of the Department of Professional and Community Education. She originally trained as a painter before qualifying as an art therapist in the mid-1970s, working in acute psychiatry and with people with learning disabilities. Her research interests include the development of art therapy’s evidence base, particularly through practice-based and visual research methods, the interface between the theories and practices of visual art/visual culture and art therapy, and the development of art therapy as a practice and a profession around the world.