DBT-Informed Art Therapy in Practice: Skillful Means in Action

About the Book

Responding to growing interest in DBT-informed art therapy, this edited guide focuses specifically on how these interventions can treat a variety of client groups.

Combining the structure and skill development of DBT with the creativity and non-verbal communication of art therapy can be a significant advantage in treating patients who are resistant to talking therapy. This book includes international contributors who cover work with a wide variety of populations, such as those with suicidal behaviours, eating disorders, and personality disorders. Divided in two parts, Part I focuses purely on DBT-informed art therapy, whilst Part II brings in multi-modal DBT-informed approaches, such as poetry and movement, but all with visual art as a component.

Table of Contents:
Introduction. Part 1: DBT-Informed Visual Art Therapy in Practice. 1. The Three M's of DBT-Informed Art Therapy. 2. The Pause: DBT, Borderline Personality Disorder and the Construct of Emptiness. 3. Utilizing DBT, Mindfulness, and Art Therapy in Today's Healthcare Environments. 4. My Journey as an Art Therapist Focusing on DBT and Art Making. 5. Inspiring and Sustaining Hope: Treating Suicidal Behaviour with DBT-Informed Art Therapy. 6. DBT in Action: Art Therapy and DBT Skills Training in the Treatment of Eating Disorders. 7. DBT-Informed Ceramic-Based Art Therapy Groups for Adolescents: Education the Community About the Impacts of Sexual Abuse Through Public Exhibition and Social Activism. 8. From Hatch to Handshake: Combined Art Therapy and DBT Skills Training in a High-Security Learning Disability Treatment Unit. Part 2: Multimodal DBT-Informed Approaches. 9. DBT Case Conceptualization Featuring Art Therapy and Poetry Interventions. 10. Group InCircle: Development and Implementation of a Novel DBT-Informed Creative Arts Therapy Group for Veterans with Serious Mental Illness in a Large Hospital Setting. 11. Creative Mindfulness: DBT-Skills Oriented Intermodal Expressive Arts Therapy for Populations with Severe Emotion Dysregulation. 12. Toward a Distress Tolerance-Informed Expressive Arts Therapy Protocol with Vulnerable Populations Experiencing Multiple, Persistent Barriers. 13. Queering DBT: Critical DBT-Informed Art Therapy with the LGBTQIA+ Community. 14. Integrating DBT-Informed Psychoeducation with Visual Journaling: Practical Considerations. Author biographies

About the Author :
Susan Clark is the author of DBT-Informed Art Therapy (JKP, Sept 2016). She is an art therapist and counsellor with over 20 years of experience in the mental health field and has extensive experience leading standard didactic and DBT-informed art therapy skills training groups. She is based in Kent, Ohio.

Review :
Clark and her impressive co-authors have created a gem: a book that concretely demonstrates how expressive arts therapists in dozens of clinical settings help troubled and dysregulated clients to personally connect with crucial skills and therapeutic processes in DBT. The case studies alone are worth the price of admission. It inspired me to learn how these modalities help clients to personalize and play with such important concepts as emptiness, mindfulness, dialectics, radical acceptance, metaphor, and so many others. If I could start over in my DBT career, I would immerse myself in the uses of poetry, song, visual arts, clay-based art, and artistic collaborations to bring home the evidence-based treatment to which I have devoted my career. This is a wonderful book with rich detail and illustrations of some of the work the clients have done. This book provides an interesting and useful insight into the use of DBT and art therapy in the treatment of people with severe or chronic mental health issues. There are clear presentations and examples of how to apply the method with different collectives. I thank Susan Clark for inviting me to learn about DBT-informed art therapy, something I was reluctant to do since I was aware of an explicitly negative bias. I now realize that my ideas were actually distorted, and am delighted to recommend that art therapists explore the creative interventions in this inspiring volume.