Cats make fantastic companions and therapeutic partners. They can help reduce stress, lower heart rate and blood pressure levels, soothe immune systems and ease tension in daily lives.
The top-level group represented cats that enjoyed open relationships with their owners. These cats would allow access to outdoor areas for humans while still seeming to respond well when people approached, yet seemed less interested in physical proximity from owners.
Art Therapy with Felines
Cats have long been revered as companions, bringing us joy, relieving stress and anxiety, regulating blood pressure and slowing our heartsbeat. Their presence soothes hearts while providing a sense of belonging and an emotional bonding.
Recent research demonstrated that cats form strong emotional ties with their owners. The experiment involved 70 kittens separated for two minutes from their caregiver before being reintroduced and observed for attachment styles similar to human infant literature; 60 percent displayed secure attachment while the remaining 30 percent could either be insecure, ambivalent, or avoidant.
Our Creative Arts Therapies (CAT) Program assists students in exploring all facets of creative arts as a healing modality for individuals and groups. These 12-week sessions meet weekly at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and include writing, visual art and dance as forms of creative therapy. In addition, the program offers students placement opportunities across many different fields – it should not be seen as clinical and does not lead to licensure or certification of any sort.
Art Therapy with Children
Art therapy offers children many advantages, including improved ability to focus and manage stress, reconcile emotional conflicts, increase self-awareness and develop healthy coping skills. Integrating arts into children’s lives may also assist with reality orientation and socialization.
Cats may seem independent, but studies have demonstrated their dependence on humans more than we might realize. Cats display hallmark signs of attachment with their caregivers just like dogs and babies do.
Turner explored the ratio of successful intents to interact between humans and cats separately, then correlating this data with total interaction time for every cat-human dyad. She discovered that more often a cat was interacted with, the longer they remained engaged; more interactive owners caused their cat to respond by decreasing its own rate of initiating interaction; similarly extraverted owners reduced this response from their cat. These results demonstrate how individual personalities and relationship histories both influence what type of bond exists between human and feline companions.
Art Therapy with Seniors
As seniors experience loss of physical or mental capabilities, feelings of learned helplessness often accompany isolation. Art therapy provides an effective means to combat this passivity while creating healthy outlets for expression and relieving feelings of helplessness.
Turner studied both the proportion of successful intents to interact between cat and human as well as total interaction time in human-cat dyads studied, as well as total interactions. His results demonstrated that when more successful intents to interact with cats were attempted in any relationship, total interactions increased accordingly.
Seniors living in long-term care facilities can utilize online CAT sessions as a space to connect with mental health professionals and engage in creative activities that improve their quality of life. Research on this population has demonstrated how CAT sessions can increase motivation, self-esteem and confidence while maintaining or increasing cognitive functioning in elderly participants.
Art Therapy with Individuals
Therapists will ask about your health history, goals, and concerns before suggesting an art medium such as drawing or painting to explore a theme. In addition to using visual mediums like drawing or painting, therapists may use music, poetry, drama, movement therapy or any other creative methods in order to support healing and encourage transformation.
Research indicates that cat-assisted therapy (CATs) activate various brain regions linked with creativity, including the frontal cortex, hippocampus, basal ganglia (responsible for motor learning and emotions), and intuition, per a prior article. These changes contribute to neuroplasticity–the process by which brain rewiring takes place–in which individuals rewire themselves over time.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many cognitive behavioral therapy (CAT) practitioners switched to online treatment. An international study conducted during this time found that reported benefits were related to several factors including patients’ ability to express themselves in art; with communication being found as having the strongest correlation with reported benefits.