Hello my friends. So today
I'll be talking about the pros and
cons of being an Art Therapist and being
in the career field of Art Therapy.
So, we'll go over the benefits,
the advantages, as well as the challenges that come with
being an Art Therapist and working as one (in the US).
My name is Youhjung and
I do freelance Art Therapy work, as well as,
online content creation.
Before we get into the pros and cons,
I just want to say that this is
my personal point of view
on working as an art therapist and becoming an art therapist.
So it will be different what
you will experience, what you will feel and think when you get into
the career field. So just keep that in mind.
So the first pro is
that art therapy work is very satisfying,
and rewarding work.
It's really satisfying to see clients
make art
and see them grow
through art-making processes, and to
hold that space for people,
to find different parts of
themselves that they haven't found
before and express feelings and thoughts that they've never
knew existed
or they didn't really get to explore.
So witnessing
everybody's "Aha" moments
and whenever they gain insight, it's just
a very fulfilling part of
working as an Art Therapist.
When you do Art Therapy
with people, you'll notice that
things get right to the point
really fast and there's no
long routes
and there's
not a lot of going in circles,
a lot of times, clients and people are able to express
themselves pretty directly.
The art is kind of like a
shortcut to the main issue, the main problem,
and the main (therapeutic) goal that we are trying to focus on.
So that's also another satisfying
part about Art Therapy. The second point
that I wanted to share with y'all was that
with Art Therapy and with going through
Art Therapy training, it's really helpful
for your own personal growth
and for you to understand
more about yourself and the people around you.
So when you go through the trainings
and the education and the experience of
working as an Art Therapist,
you will learn so much about yourself,
about emotions, about healing,
about human psychology, and you get to gain
a coping skill of
using creative art as a way to cope.
And
this is something that you take with you
once you learn you take with you for the rest of your life.
And so I think
With Art Therapy and with going into that field,
you gain deep knowledge about
yourself, which is very helpful for you
in terms of working as an Art Therapist
and as a human being too.
Another pro is that there's a lot of
flexibility and possibility
within this career field. Because Art Therapy
is relatively new
in comparison to other types of
work and other types of career fields,
there's a lot of possibilities in you creating the
specific career that YOU want.
So you might be able to become a director,
you might be able to create and find
a program that you really love,
or you might be able to integrate different types
of therapy with Art Therapy and
unique services to people.
And you might become a
spokesperson for art and Art Therapy.
There's a lot of different things that you can do
once you get that
experience and knowledge of Art Therapy.
And also, it's just
purely fun to do Art Therapy work -
to work with art materials,
and try out new materials and see how that
affects people, and to witness clients
growing through Art Therapy,
and seeing them make art, experiment with art
and you also have to make art
yourself too as an Art Therapist
so that's also fun too.
So there's a lighthearted and fun
aspect to Art Therapy that I really love.
Let's get into the cons of
getting into the Art Therapy field and working as an Art Therapist.
So the first thing is that
this is a pretty high investment career
field. So what I mean is that
in order to become an Art Therapist
it requires a lot of investment in your time
and in your money.
So when you get into
the training and the education
to become an Art Therapist, it requires
high amounts of tuition.
And I know that tuitions can
range from $30,000
to almost
$50,000 per year these days
for graduate programs
that specialize in Art Therapy
and it can take a significant amount of time
to become an Art Therapist because if you count Bachelor's degree and
Master's degree and the time it takes to become
Board Certified and Licensed,
then it could range
from 7 plus years
and
it just depends on the person, but for
me personally, it took almost
8 years in total if you counted from the moment I
started my Bachelor's degree.
That's how much time it can
take for you to actually start
doing Art Therapy with people as a
licensed or certified Art Therapist.
And because the tuition is pretty high,
a lot of times people have to take out
student loans, and this is a very big
commitment and an investment.
Repaying loans could take a long, long time
especially if the loan that you take out
is a very high amount
so this is something that I think
will require you to think really really hard about
before you get into starting
this Art Therapy career field.
The other con is that working as an Art Therapist
the average pay (salary) is not that high.
So,
when people being to
do Art Therapy, based on surveys,
people make around $30,000~ a year,
and the average that I found by
doing research was $43,000
a year and $23 per hour.
So if you look at that and
compare to other types of
psychology or mental health careers,
it can be a lower paying
job. Depending on how you look at it,
that might be okay, that might not be sufficient.
And if you took out loans to
get through that Art Therapy education and get that
Master's degree, then it can be especially
hard if your pay is low, because it might
take a long time to pay off the loans
and that can be a very big challenge
for Art Therapists. The third con is
that the job outlook for
Art Therapy is not that
positive.
So once you get out of graduate program
and once you get certified, or
even before you get certified,
it can be very hard to find an Art Therapist job out there.
Because this field is pretty new
and because of other myriads of
reasons, there are
not a lot of jobs out there especially in
states that don't have licenses
for Art Therapists. So I
tried to do research on this topic and
it was really hard to find
concrete evidence for job growth
and job outlook for Art Therapists because there is just
no research going on in this area.
The only thing that I could find
was that in 2004
the job outlook
was that the number of jobs
was decreasing slightly
and they projected that in
2008 or 2010 or so
it will increase but since there was
no research going on at that time I believe
(or at least I don't see that right now)
we don't really know what the job outlook really
looks like right now, and whether the
number of jobs available increased or decreased
right now. So this means that you might have to
work other jobs and you might have to work
in roles or positions that are not
specifically for Art Therapists.
So that might include
doing social work jobs,
doing just pure art related jobs,
doing different kinds of businesses or
part-time jobs, so because of
the job outlook and the number of art therapy jobs out there,
it can be a challenge and
it can be difficult for those of you who
really just want to do Art Therapy work
when you graduate and
get a license.
And the last thing I want to mention is that
this can differ for a lot of people, but
I think that being an Art Therapist and working
as an Art Therapist,
you don't see a lot of people who really know
what you do and it's very
easy for people to misunderstand what you do
or just don't know what you do.
And that can be very difficult to navigate
as you work because you might feel
not validated for the work that you do,
you might not feel like you're appreciated
for the work you do, you might not feel
connected to other people around you
especially co-workers,
and maybe supervisors - they might
not even understand what you do - so that can be very
hard, emotionally.
So it's really easy to get in a
defensive position or be resentful of
other people or
very angry or irritated a lot of times.
And plus a lot of the environments
that you might work in that are mental health related
or especially non-profit environments
that can be no supportive in
what you do. So that's one thing
that I think might be a difficult part
about becoming an Art Therapist and working as one.
In conclusion, being an Art Therapist
will require a lot of
high investment and low guarantee
on jobs but
it can be very rewarding
and there's a lot of possibilities and flexibilities in
creating your own career path.
I talk about more on this topic
in my podcast "Thirsty For Art"
in episode 22 so if you want to hear more about the pros and cons and
the benefits and the
challenges that come with
becoming an Art Therapist, definitely make sure to check that out.
The link is in the description box below.
Let me know what you are curious about
the Art Therapist career and becoming an Art Therapist
in the comments below and I'll make sure to answer them.
Thank you for listening and watching,
I'll talk to you next time. Bye :) ♥︎