AN ART THERAPY SOLUTION TO A TELEHEALTH PROBLEM

Volume 16, Issue 4, 01 January 1999, Pages 186 – 193 ART THERAPY: JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN ART THERAPY ASSOCIATION
Authors: Kate Collie; Davor Cubrani

Telehealth refers to the use of telecommunications technologies to increase equality of access to health care. In this paper, we describe a gap that exists in the area of telehealth and propose that computersupported distance art therapy can fill the need for telehealth delivery methods that, like text-only Internet services, can reach people in their own homes, and, like videoconferencing, can include both audio and visual communication. We refer to an action research study we conducted in which we worked collaboratively to design and evaluate a computer system that supports distance group art therapy, and argue that art therapy is uniquely suited to telehealth for reasons related to the history of art therapy, the nature of the art therapy process, characteristics of visual art as a medium of expression, particular qualities of computer images, and psychological effects of using a computer.