Art Therapy and Stress Relieving

There is a big misconception that art therapy is used for patients who experience high levels of trauma. What most people don’t know is that art therapy is a technique used to improve one’s mental health by relieving stress, anxiety, and other triggers. As we finish our first full online semester, I personally have found that my anxiety and stress have drastically increased. As an engineering student, I have little time to focus on art which saddens me because I tend to use art as a way to destress. For my capstone project I will be experimenting with various projects and exercises that have been proved to be effective in reducing stress and rank my stress before and after completing each project in order to find the most effective art therapy projects. In addition, I will be including some of my other STEM peers in my project and have them complete some of the exercises with me in order to determine which art therapy exercises work best for busy STEM students. Finally, I will present my findings and data with other college students who are and aren’t STEM majors and share which projects were most effective for me and my peers.