The Art Therapists' Primer

Book excerpt: Doctor Ellen G. Horovitz shares over 40 years of experience as she transliterates evidence-based art therapy into medical terminology. This revised and updated Third Edition spells out the how-to's behind producing art therapy assessments, process notes, significant sessions, objectives and modalities, termination summaries and internet-based assessments into translatable documentation, designed to dovetail within an interdisciplinary medical model. In addition, this third edition emphasizes information on how to use psychological applications and art therapy based assessments to ensure best practices and efficacy of patient care. This step-by-step methodology fashions these reports, placing art therapy on equal footing with all mental health clinicians and generates records, which serve as points of departure for practitioners. This text is designed as a teaching tool that lays the foundation to enhance pertinent skills that are important to patient practice, including the armament to write up clinically-based reports that serve as a model for the field. Additionally, the practitioner is offered sample formats, legends and abbreviations of clinical and psychiatric terms, guidelines for recordable events, instructions of writing up objectives, modalities, and treatment goals as well as training on composing progress versus process notes. The Appendices provides a wealth of information and forms to use in one's clinical practice. This must-have reference manual amasses information that will serve as a companion guide for every art therapist to formulate clinical reports, and it will aid patients toward their trajectory of wellness, recovery and, above all, health.