Editor’s Note: This is the first story in a series of three stories on different creative arts therapies that students are studying at the University.

Stressed-out students who have their pricey psychiatrists on speed dial may benefit from a different type of therapy – creativity.

Creative arts therapies, including art, drama and music therapy, can offer artful relief for many disabilities and illnesses.

As these therapies become more mainstream ideas, more students are choosing to study them in hopes of someday singing, drawing and acting clients to better health.

The National Coalition of Creative Arts Therapies Associations Web site, www.nccata.org/index.htm, defines creative arts therapy as using creative processes “to foster health, communication, and expression.”

Music therapy is the only creative arts therapy major offered at the University, but that has not stopped some students from working toward degrees in other areas of therapy study.

Erika Vinson, a junior from Augusta, is one inventive student who created her own honors interdisciplinary study in art and psychology – the two foundations of art therapy.

“Counseling is what I’ve always wanted to do,” Vinson said. “You can use art in that.”

Vinson has participated in art therapy workshops through the ArtReach Foundation, which she says involves “teaching older people basic (art therapy) theories and methods to use when other methods don’t really work.”

Art therapists work most frequently with children, but other age groups, such as the elderly, also can benefit from art therapy methods, including drawing and painting with different materials.

Vinson has focused mostly on art therapy for “children who have experienced trauma in their lives,” like victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Creating their own works of art helps children “express all the different feelings that come with that,” Vinson said.

In the future, Vinson plans to study psychology in graduate school and get a certification in art therapy.

“I don’t want to pigeonhole myself in one very, very specific field,” she said.

Another student interested in art therapy, Callan Steinmann, also created her own honors interdisciplinary studies major, which she calls “Art as an Expressive Therapy.”

Steinmann enjoys psychology and has shown proficiency for art for years, she said.

Unlike Vinson, she plans to get a master’s degree in art therapy at one of the few graduate-level programs available.

“If you want to practice art therapy, you have to have a master’s degree in art therapy,” said the junior from Atlanta.

To Steinmann, art therapy is like a kind of counseling.

“It’s a good way to get (clients) to open up and talk about their experiences,” she said.