This book provides useful information that will allow school counselors to stretch themselves and grow their confidence as they integrate these expressive arts interventions into their work with students. The book opens with a chapter addressing the value of the expressive arts as a conduit to personal growth and development. Also addressed is the integration of the arts into the school counseling milieu. The six sections of the book focus on a separate form of the expressive modalities. Within each section, the book presents the interventions based on the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) model domains: academic, career, and personal/social. The modalities included are the visual arts, music, movement and dance, expressive writing/poetry, drama, and a final section incorporating other modes of creative expression. The book closes with a chart that presents the various types of concerns for which students typically need assistance (such as grief and loss, self-esteem, social skills, etc.) and the interventions that may be most effective in addressing these issues.

This book aids counselor educators, supervisors, and counselors-in-training in assisting children, adolescents, and their families to foster coping methods and strategies while navigating contemporary issues. It promotes the essence of counselor growth, and deals with conceptualization of the client’s presenting problems along with personal and client goals, step-by-step accounts of the happenings in counseling sessions, and counseling outcome. Case studies were written in contexts that reflect the fact that children and adolescents are part of larger systems family, school, peer, and community. Systemic context, developmental and relational considerations, multicultural perspectives, and creative interventions were infused in the cases. Time-efficient methods, such as brief counseling, were used in some of the cases. The case studies selected highlight contemporary issues and relevant themes that are prevalent in the lives of youths (i.e., abuse, anxiety, giftedness, disability, social media and pop culture, social deficits and relationships, trauma, bullying, changing families, body image, substance abuse, incarcerated family members, race and ethnicity, and sexual identity and orientation). These themes capture both the child and adolescent perspectives and are designed to provide breadth and depth during classroom discussions and debriefing.

Counseling has long been considered to be an art, as well as a science, of helping individuals grow and develop. This book provides counselors and counseling students with a broader awareness of the ways in which traditional theories can be supplemented with expressive arts interventions. It also provides a clear description of the ways in which multicultural considerations can be addressed via the integration of the expressive arts into practice. The book presents a collection of field-tested creative interventions contributed by practicing counselors and counselor educators. It includes 111 interventions for use with various clients and presenting issues, including more than 40 new expressive arts interventions. The book is organized into an introductory chapter and three sections. The introductory chapter gives an introduction to the use of expressive arts in counseling. The first section presents theories of counseling and expressive arts approaches such as Adlerian theory, solution-focused therapy, cognitive behavioral theory, choice theory, existential theory, feminist theory, Gestalt theory, and person-centered therapy, narrative approaches, trauma-informed counseling, family counseling, and integrative theory. The second section discusses emerging and special issues in expressive arts and counseling such as neuroscientific applications for expressive therapies and clinical supervision. The final section describes the additional clinical uses of the expressive arts such as adventure therapy, animal-assisted therapy, child-centered play therapy, mindfulness in counseling, and sandplay therapy.