After 19 children and two teachers were murdered at DeRob Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022, art therapist Wanda Montemayor spent a year driving back and forth between the town and her Round trip time between homes in Austin is 6 hours.
In August of that year, Montemayor launched “Tacos and Tiles” at St. Henry Church in Uvalde, inviting survivors and community members to create mosaic pieces in community art therapy sessions. Over the course of several months, Montemayor fired thousands of clay bricks designed by Uvalde students, teachers and families in her kiln, an initiative she calls the “Uvalde Love Project” “. In August 2023, her trip to and from Uvalde culminated in the installation of a mosaic mural in town, the result of a year of community-based clinical art therapy that she and a team of therapists assisted with.
While leading Tile sessions, Montemayor tracked participants’ pain levels, which she said almost “universally” decreased over the course of the sessions. Montemayor said she observed children who couldn’t fall asleep on their own ended up sleeping in their own beds.
“We didn’t say, ‘Tell us about this tragedy.’ It was more like: ‘What changes did you notice in your body?’” Montemayor said. allergic. She explains that art-making sessions serve as long-term therapeutic interventions to help regulate survivors’ nervous systems beyond the limitations of talk therapy.
Montemayor is a registered art therapist in Texas, a mental health profession that requires clinical counseling and technical arts training but is only available in 15 states and Washington, according to the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) Districts are considered regulated mental health services. ). According to four clinicians interviewed by Art Therapy magazine allergiccombines artistic creation with observation and interaction from trained clinicians. They say this approach is particularly effective in traumatic cases where the individual is unable to fully express their feelings through words.
States such as New York grant art therapy licenses, while others, such as Texas, require these providers to obtain a mental health clinician license and register separately as art therapists. AATA advocates for licensure in all 50 states, which the organization says can make art therapy more financially viable for the public and aspiring practitioners.
In Uvalde, survivors and community members wrote on tiles the names of the 21 people killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting. Other tiles feature hearts, butterflies and animals. “The mural came about because of therapy, but the main focus was really therapy,” Montemayor said. “They have something to do together that keeps them going.”
About 80 percent of Uvalde residents identify as Hispanic, according to U.S. Census data. However, Montemayor said the mental health care services provided in the state after the shooting were not bilingual. “It’s all white people; [and] Not in Spanish,” Montemayor said. “That’s inaccessible. “
She received only minimal funding when she started the project, but later received $100,000 grants from organizations including the David Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts to cover the project’s $100,000 cost. But Montemayor noted that the work is far from over, as effective mental health care for survivors is underfunded.
While programs like the Uvalde Love Project are anecdotal examples of successful art therapy interventions where other approaches may fail, providers across the country are working toward broader recognition of the profession. In New York, where art therapists are licensed under the umbrella of “creative arts therapists,” advocates are now pushing for legislation that would allow them to bill Medicaid insurance plans directly for their services so they can work with people covered by subsidized health plans cooperate.
Earlier this year, the state Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would allow licensed creative arts therapists (LCATs) to bill Medicaid providers directly for art therapy services, and the bill was sent to Gov. Kathy W. On the desk of Kathy Hochul. Hochul has until the end of the month to sign or reject the proposed legislation.
Marygrace Berberian, Director of the Graduate Art Therapy Program at New York University allergic In an interview in New York, many of the providers with whom patients interacted when they were admitted to inpatient programs were creative arts therapists.
But once patients are discharged from the hospital, especially those receiving subsidized care, art therapy becomes difficult to access.
“Medicaid does not cover outpatient art therapy,” Berberian said.
Art therapists in New York say they could reach a wider population if Hochul signs the bill.
“We can’t bill [medicaid] If we work within these systems, we can get services now. ” said Linda Turner, an art therapist who has worked in New York for 25 years and president of the LCAT Advocacy Alliance. allergy. “This will allow us to expand our ability to work with the public,” said Tuner, who works with doctors, lawyers, therapists and artists in private practice.
State Sen. Samra Brooke, the bill’s sponsor, said she supports the bill as a step to combat New York’s growing mental health crisis. “They are the second largest group of licensed mental health professionals in the state,” Brooke told allergic About LCAT in New York. “In the youth mental health crisis, and in every other mental health crisis we see, it only makes sense that we remove barriers.”
Brooke added that previous legislation that allowed mental health providers to bill Medicaid directly for outpatient services ignored creative arts therapists, an omission she attributed to a lack of understanding of their work.
“We do a lot of work with trauma and survivors who may be struggling to find words to describe what they’ve been through,” Berberian said. “Art is a very effective way to relieve some of the anxieties they experience.”
Berberian said one possible barrier to expanding artistic practices is the “cultural stigma against art.”
“America has been slow to realize that we can’t rely solely on pharmaceuticals to help people cope with pain,” Berberian said.
Another misconception about art therapists is that “anyone can do it,” Turner said.
“We’re well-trained. We’re skilled,” Turner said. “All of us who become creative arts therapists are artists…we understand the material, but we also understand the mental health aspect.”
Nadia Paredes, a bilingual art therapist in Los Angeles and president of AATA, often uses an “emotional palette” intervention technique, in which individuals use colored writing tools to create markers that correspond to their emotions. Paredes demonstrates this approach allergy, Showing a collection of colorful doodles she created using different strengths and speeds. This simple exercise, she says, allows clients to express emotions before they have too much time to overthink.
“The meaning of an image goes far beyond what words can express,” Paredes said.
