Novel Solutions to Student Problems: A Phenomenological Exploration of a Single Session Approach to Art Therapy With Creative Arts University Students

Abstract

Within the Australian university context, research has uncovered increasing levels of psychological distress, in the form of stress, anxiety and depression. Higher rates of psychological distress have been reported in undergraduate students specifically enrolled in creative arts programs. Despite these increasing levels of psychological distress, university students are reluctant to engage with mental health and wellbeing supports. To explore ways to meet the mental health and wellbeing needs of creative arts university students, the Creative Arts and Music Therapy Research Unit at The University of Melbourne commenced a project exploring the benefits and pitfalls of a brief creative arts therapies approach for students attending a campus based wellbeing clinic. This exploratory research study formed the art therapy component of this much broader research endeavor. Creative arts students in this research study were invited to participate in a single session art therapy encounter that involved the visual exploration of the miracle question, asking students to visually depict “what the problem looks like and how it will look when the problem is resolved or you feel like you can cope with it better?” The descriptive findings of this exploratory research study revealed how the combination of art therapy used within a single session framework was able to afford students a novel means to externalize problems, leading students to forming a less internalized view of the self.

Effectiveness of Community-Based Outreach Interventions for Individuals Living with Mental Ill-Health in Australia: A Systematic Review

“…Tere was a similar experience with interventions via organisational health promotion programs which attributed high compliance to the fexibility and accessibility of the program [80,94,101]. Other institutional settings where light-touch interventions were feasibly administered to large groups were universities [79,103], military institutions [72,81,90], and prisons [65,92,93].…”

Art Therapy for Children in Short-Term Hospitalization

“…This process encourages patients to continue coping with the problem even after the treatment session is over. Also, both patient and therapist relate to each encounter, whether the first or the last, as a standalone therapy session ( Wilson, 2021 ).…”

Navigating Uncertainty

“…A commitment to long term process is also considered important for providing safety, but university students are less likely to engage with and adhere to long-term psychotherapeutic regimens and typically only engage in therapy for a short time, often attending only one or two sessions (Hopkins et al, 2017). We have explored this through a single session art therapy program for students in our faculty previously (Wilson, 2021) and discovered that students demonstrated high levels of agency in managing their own trauma. This was based on solution-focused frameworks that are thought to empower people to operationalise their own solutions rather than traditional models that assume therapists need to be protective (Lethem, 2002).…”