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Thirty-Two Years and Counting

It is both a daunting and an exhilarating experience to take on the editorship of Art Therapy in its 32nd year of publication. Daunting because I follow so many exemplary editors who have indelibly made remarkable contributions. Exhilarating because the quality of submissions reflects a level of engagement in research endeavors never before seen in our profession. Previous editors Gary Barlow, Linda Gantt, Cathy Malchiodi, Francis Kaplan, Frances Anderson, and Lynn Kapitan have all made worthy contributions that have made this journal the international scholarly publication it is recognized as today. Lynn Kapitan deserves exceptional praise for her management and coordination of multiple transitions during her tenure. These have brought Art Therapy into the 21st century with its own website, searchable online content of all back issues, a web-based submission and review system, inclusion of the Journal in the EbscoHost database that allows worldwide dissemination of art therapy scholarship, and the successful transition to publisher Taylor & Francis with its international presence and ability to market the Journal more strategically. This is an exciting time for the Journal and for our profession. There is an increasing international awareness of the value and benefit of art therapy services, programs to educate and train art therapists are growing in size and scope around the world, and research about art therapy is rapidly increasing. As the official journal of the American Art Therapy Association, Art Therapy has an important role to play in supporting and promoting these trends. Namely, the Journal can continue serving as the premier destination for publication of research on art therapy. At this juncture, we encourage the submission of more practice-based manuscripts to expand the dialogue among art therapy practitioners and to bring knowledge about their valuable work with targeted populations into the body of literature of the profession. Featuring both practice and research forges a necessary link between the two that enriches both. The articles in this issue fulfill the aims of expanding research with implications for working with targeted populations that have been identified by art therapy researchers as important to study (Kaiser & Deaver, 2013). The first, “Art Making as a Mental Health Recovery Tool for Change and Coping” by Theresa Van Lith, is a qualitative study of what is one of the most critical topics of study for art therapy—what consumers with persistent mental health concerns experience as a result of participation in art therapy. Strengths of the study are notable for qualitative research in art therapy: the participation of real-life consumers of art therapy, extensive researcher engagement with 12 participants over the course of a year, interview focus on reflections about the artwork created during the study, and participant validation of themes that evolved during data analysis. Van Lith concluded that for these individuals art therapy was both a mechanism of change for achieving a connection with an authentic self and also a useful tool for day-to-day coping and problem solving. I find it intriguing that the theme involving connecting with the inner self, which participants described as concurrent with immersion in the creative process, is consistent with recent literature that emphasizes that “owning your self” (van der Kolk, 2014, p. 203) is a principal development that occurs during trauma recovery. It is fascinating that what consumers of art therapy identify as curative echoes what experts judge as critical for therapeutic change. In the next article, “Recognizing Emotions: Testing an Intervention for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Donna Abely Richard, William More, and Stephen P. Joy describe their research on a three-dimensional art therapy intervention designed to facilitate recognition of facial emotions and thus promote the ability for social interaction. Further, the authors provide preliminary findings regarding the intervention’s effectiveness with young children with autism spectrum disorder. Providing services for those with autism spectrum disorder is a growing area of practice in art therapy and our literature needs both practice-based literature and research to investigate this topic in more depth. Although this pilot study did not show any statistical significance between the experimental and control groups, effect sizes showed a small difference in improvement for the experimental group, suggesting that the intervention has promise. Coauthors Jennifer E. Drake and Adeline Hodge contribute a pilot study that builds on previous research in psychology with implications for art therapy: “Drawing Versus Writing: The Role of Preference in Regulating Short-Term Affect.” Most art therapists are familiar with the work of Pennebaker and colleagues (see, e.g., Pennebaker & Francis, 1996) on the benefits of expressive writing. Since his work, others have compared writing to drawing to test their comparative benefits. Pizarro (2004) demonstrated that following a negative mood induction, drawing a still life was more effective at improving mood in the short-term than either drawing or writing about a negative mood. Others have shown that short-term mood is improved more effectively when the emotion regulation goal is distraction rather than