Creative Arts and Child Life Therapy Programs
Our Creative Arts Therapy programs include multi-medium art therapy for you and your loved ones. We use art-making to support psychological coping and adjustment to illness, hospitalization, and loss. Our art therapists are skilled in the visual arts, such as drawing, painting, and sculpture, as well as in human development, psychology, bereavement, and counseling theories and techniques.
Art therapists work with various media, the creative process, and the artwork you produce to help you:
- Explore your feelings
- Improve your verbal and non-verbal communication
- Feel more relaxed
- Work through emotional conflicts
- Develop coping strategies
- Increase your sense of self-awareness and connection to others
- Cope with symptoms like anxiety and pain
- Enjoy the life-affirming pleasures of creating art
Child Life
Child life specialists are trained professionals with expertise in helping children and their families overcome life’s most challenging events, particularly those resulting from an illness or hospitalization. Child life specialists promote coping through play, preparation, education, and self-expression activities. An inpatient child life specialist is available to children of palliative care patients for developmentally appropriate emotional support, psycho-education, and teaching about illness and dying. Child life specialists also play a vital role in supporting and counseling parents and caregivers about the needs of children under stress and children experiencing grief. Child life therapists are specially trained in child development and family systems.
As multidisciplinary team members, creative arts therapists and child life specialists collaborate with nurses, physicians, parents, social workers, and teachers to provide quality care and promote health and well-being.
“The Loom”
The Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute is pleased to present The Loom, our creative arts and literary magazine. The Loom is a collection of artwork and creative writing from patients, families, caregivers and staff of the Palliative Care Unit. It is published annually and is available in print or online. To subscribe, contact lauren.smith@mountsinai.org.
Creative arts therapy internships are available to second year art therapy graduate students. Contact lauren.smith@mountsinai.org for more information.