Art Therapist?

You've made a lot of threads over the past week about a variety of difference roles. I'm getting the sense that you are bouncing between different ideas a lot. Mental health nursing, PWP and arts therapist are vastly different roles. Do you have a clear idea of what you would like to achieve in your career? You are obviously committed to a career in the health sector, which is great. What about it draws you in? Are you looking for day-to-day support? To provide specialist input? To work in managing/alleviating mental health/learning disability/personality disorder difficulties? Are you an arty person? Do you feel you'd like to do that therapeutically?

Arts therapy is an undergraduate degree, so you don't need a lot of experience to do that. Not sure why a Master's would be considered any different.

When I did an art therapy taster day thing at Derby uni they said to get on the course you would need 2 years of relevant work experience and a proper art portfolio to demonstrate your skills at art. So no, you couldn't do it right now. The masters is also unfunded and lasts 2 years during which time you will have to pay for private therapy as well so very expensive. Lastly, jobs in this area aren't the easiest to find either, as you can imagine when budgets are cut jobs like art therapists are probably seen as less important than, for example, a psychiatrist.

Personally I wasn't impressed with the taster day as the impression I was given by the guy running it was that you are basically there to help the person do their art more than actually try and cause any change... and most of the work was in prisons according to him as well. No idea if this was accurate but it's what I was told.

Ah the course I was looking at is 3 years part time, so enables you to stay in a part time job too, but I looked into personal therapy and that does seem to amount to quite a bit of money. Is that experience for two years cumulatively or continuously? I already have an art portfolio that I am building up so I guess that is good.
Oh interesting, I am going to go to an open day at the uni I want to go to and hopefully that will give me a better insight into the course and prospects after completing it. I think I would definitely prefer exploring the persons emotions/experiences rather than helping them more with their art pieces.

Thanks for the help

No worries, my understanding was that you need to be in personal therapy for X number of hours so you could possibly get away without being in therapy for your whole course, but we were still told it generally cost £3000+ as obviously it's private :/ which is pretty crazy, although I obviously do understand the point of it

Good idea, I wasn't impressed at all with the course at the uni I was at but I wasn't impressed with the taster day either so it may be that rather than the profession!