Conclusion

As my project is coming to an end, I would like to talk a little bit about my main takeaways from my research. First of all, different things affect people differently. My art group was able to relax some of the participants, while it had an indifferent effect on others, and even ended up putting additional stress on other participants. Art therapy, just like other forms of therapy, will benefit some people, but not everyone. The other thing that I learned from working with the high school participants in my group is that they are desperate for an outlet to reduce their stress. Even if art therapy wasn't right for them, they were willing to give it a try because a lot of these kids need help with stress management, and hopefully in the future they will be exposed to different methods.

By doing my project, I also learned some important things about myself. I learned that I love psychology, and plan to major in psychology in college. I am still very interested in art therapy, but am unsure on whether or not I want to continue studying it in the future; however, I am grateful for this opportunity to study a very unique field of psychology, one that mixes my interests of both art and psychology. In addition, I realized the importance of patience when running my group, and also to understand that everyone's life is completely different and in positions like a group leader, you have to be able to try and understand that everyone has different situations and will react uniquely to different things.

I wanted to thank my on-site advisor, Kylin Jewell, who taught me so much about art therapy and lent me all the resources I could have asked for. I also wanted to thank Adrienne Fluitt, my BASIS advisor, for guiding me through my whole project and helping me with everything, and for first getting me interested in art therapy last year. Many thanks and much love.

Now, my final step of my project: the presentation!