Creative art therapy for mental illness

The study presents a literature review conducted on PubMed and the Cochrane Library on the use of creative art therapy (CAT) to treat mental disorders. A literature review was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of CAT in specific mental disorders such as schizophrenia, trauma-related disorders, major depression and bipolar disorder. Although the literature suggests that CAT may be a low-risk, high-benefit intervention for the treatment of these disorders, a lack of methodological rigor and inconsistent study methods have hindered the advancement of CAT in use for severe mental disorders. Greater standardisation of methods and measures for evaluating CAT interventions is needed to enable more accurate analysis of results. Furthermore, future research should investigate the biological mechanisms underlying CAT methods.