ABSTRACT

Background: Creating ‘art-alongside’ in peer art therapy groups: connection, trust, and power dynamics.

Practice Contexts: Online, private practice; peer-focused PATh group and PATh group with people within the LGBTQA + community. Face-to-face, non-government organisation; art therapy groups with people living with cancer.

Approach: Peer art therapists enter therapeutic spaces alongside their own Lived Experience of mental-health challenges. In PATh, art therapists create art-alongside participants in group art therapy.

Outcomes: Through creating art-alongside peer art therapists can demonstrate embodied understanding of and modelling of surviving mental ill-health experiences as well as deliver authentic empathy for participants with current struggles. Art-alongside can be a mutually-connecting, co-learning, beneficial practice for participants and therapist. Creating art-alongside in PATh groups can create safer spaces for participants and provide grounded therapist-as-peer role modelling.

Conclusions: Creating art-alongside participants in PATh applies peer-work and art therapy understandings and skills. It dismantles therapist/participant power locations of traditional art therapy and can be a process of mutuality and connection for participants and therapist.

Implications for Research:

Co-produced research with participants and therapists on the experience of art-alongside in PATh groups and co-produced research across ‘companion art’, ‘reflection-art’ and art-alongside in PATh, evidencing the impact of therapist-articulated Lived Experience. In addition, research is needed into the inclusion of an art-alongside PATh model in art therapy training.

Plain-language summary

Peer Art Therapy (PATh) is the framework used for practitioners who are trained and experienced in both art therapy and mental health peer work. Peer work is the practice of using our own Lived Experiences to support someone also living with similar ones and being equals within our spaces. In our context we specifically mean ‘experiences of mental health issues’. It combines the theories, skills, tasks and practices of both fields to work alongside and responsively to clients.

Peer art therapists – the authors included – share with clients, aspects of their own personal experiences of living with mental health challenges. In this article, we talk about the practical application of this approach and how peer art therapists create ‘art-alongside’ the participants in their groups. This practice can benefit both the participants and therapists and creates strong connected relationships where both are learning. Our article discusses the concepts and theories of this approach and the positive responses it creates, including: building safer spaces, peer/role modelling, increased empathy for and understanding and survival of complex mental health challenges.

The authors use personal examples of art created alongside from our clinical settings – online peer-focussed peer art therapy group and peer art therapy group with LGBTIQA + clients and art therapy groups in a non-government organisation, with people living with cancer. Our work also dismantles the need for therapist as expert in the practice of art therapy. We recommend a number of areas for future research about the value of peer art therapists making art alongside clients - research that includes both clients and therapists.

摘要

背景：在同伴艺术治疗小组中创造“艺术并列”：联系、信任和权力动力。

执业环境：在线、私人执业；以同伴为中心的 PATH 小组以及 LGBTQA + 社区内的 PATH 小组。面对面的非政府组织；与癌症患者一起进行艺术治疗小组。

方法：同伴艺术治疗师在进入治疗空间的同时，也带着他们自己的心理健康挑战的生活经验。在 PATh 中，艺术治疗师与团体艺术治疗的参与者一起创作艺术。

结果：通过与同伴艺术治疗师一起创作艺术，治疗师可以展示对幸存的精神疾病经历的具体理解和建模，并为当前挣扎的参与者提供真正的同理心。艺术陪伴对于参与者和治疗师来说可以是一种相互联系、共同学习、有益的实践。在 PATH 小组中创造艺术可以为参与者创造更安全的空间，并提供扎根的治疗师作为同伴的角色模型。

结论：与 PATh 参与者一起创作艺术应用了同伴工作和艺术治疗的理解和技能。它拆除了传统艺术治疗的治疗师/参与者的权力位置，并且可以成为参与者和治疗师的相互关系和联系的过程。

对研究的影响：

与参与者和治疗师共同开展关于 PATh 群体中艺术伴随体验的研究，并共同开展关于 PATh 中“同伴艺术”、“反思艺术”和艺术伴随的研究，证明治疗师表达的生活体验的影响。此外，还需要研究将艺术与 PATh 模型纳入艺术治疗培训中。

通俗易懂的语言总结

同伴艺术治疗（PATH）是为在艺术治疗和心理健康同伴工作方面接受过培训并具有丰富经验的从业者使用的框架。同伴工作是利用我们自己的生活经历来支持那些与相似经历一起生活并在我们的空间内平等的人。在我们的上下文中，我们特指“心理健康问题的经历”。它结合了两个领域的理论、技能、任务和实践，与客户一起工作并响应客户的要求。

同伴艺术治疗师（包括作者）与客户分享他们自己面临心理健康挑战的个人经历。在这篇文章中，我们讨论这种方法的实际应用，以及同伴艺术治疗师如何与小组中的参与者一起创造“艺术”。这种做法可以让参与者和治疗师都受益，并在双方学习的过程中建立牢固的联系关系。我们的文章讨论了这种方法的概念和理论以及它所产生的积极反应，包括：建立更安全的空间、同伴/角色建模、增强对复杂心理健康挑战的同理心、理解和生存。

作者使用了我们临床环境中创作的个人艺术实例——以同伴为中心的在线同伴艺术治疗小组、与 LGBTIQA + 客户一起的同伴艺术治疗小组以及非政府组织中针对癌症患者的艺术治疗小组。我们的工作还消除了治疗师作为艺术治疗实践专家的需求。我们建议未来研究一些关于同伴艺术治疗师与客户一起创作艺术的价值的领域——包括客户和治疗师的研究。