Clients’ experiences of the impacts of an experiential art therapy group

Utilizing the arts to improve health, resilience, and well-being (HeRe We Arts®): a randomized controlled trial in community-dwelling individuals with chronic medical conditions

“…Each week of the 8-week arts-based program included an educational component and an experiential component. All of these components were designed to incorporate different learning styles and abilities of the participants, many of which related to Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences ( 21 ). These are listed below for each week.…”

“…An interactive art experience was utilized, with participants creating a talisman key chain to represent themselves and their desires for the program. Intelligences addressed: linguistic–verbal, logical-mathematical, visual–spatial, body-kinesthetic, and intrapersonal ( 21 ).…”

“…Interactive music interventions were utilized, including lyric discussion, singing, instrument playing, and music-assisted relaxation techniques. Intelligences addressed: musical, body-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal ( 21 ).…”

“…The use of multiple interventions or strategies is also known as bundling ( 18 ), and the bundling approach has been used in health-related research ( 19 , 20 ). Therefore, we believed that multiple interventions should be used that focused on individual needs, as well as those of the community, family and society as individuals have different strengths, abilities, preferences, and learning styles ( 21–23 ). Our goal was to intervene in the context of a population health initiative, targeting community-dwelling individuals with a wide spectrum of personal and medical situations and challenges, with the overall goal of reducing health inequities, working with a variety of settings for intervention delivery.…”

“…The specific problem to be addressed was revising current health programs to help improve the health, resilience, well-being, and mood of adults coping with chronic health conditions ( 2 , 17–30 ). At the time of this study, there was limited literature regarding the use of arts-based interventions utilizing various styles of learning to help improve resilience, well-being, health, and mood in outpatient settings ( 21–23 , 25 , 31–40 ).…”