Art therapies in cancer — A non-negligible beauty and benefit

Abstract

Art therapy is a powerful tool involving the use of artistic ways of expression for physical and mental healing as well as the improvement of perception and cognitive functions. Art therapies are used to face the existence of life and death in serious diseases such as cancer, and visually express certain deeply-hidden feelings, such as fear and hope, by stimulating the memory. Through art therapy, cancer patients can express themselves with no need for talent, when they fall short of words16. The primary goal is to reveal the feelings of cancer patients and help them be happy: as psychoanalyst Jung says, “happy state is the creative state”. Keywords: Art therapy in cancer, Artistic therapies, Cancer, Expressive art therapy, Quality of life in cancer, Awareness