CONCERNS OVER LACK OF REGULATION
As demand grows, practitioners say they are concerned about the absence of regulation in Singapore.
“Anybody can call themselves an art therapist,” said Ms Loo Hwee Hwee, principal art therapist and deputy head of the paediatric psychological services division at Khoo Teck Puat-National University Children’s Medical Institute at National University Hospital.
“When this profession is not regulated and protected, then anybody who may not have the experience, may not have the training … think that they can handle it,” she said.
“At best, no harm done. But at worst … you could really make the person feel worse, because you’re touching something very emotive.”
Ms Loo added that professional art therapists are trained at the master’s level, with expertise in both art and psychology.
“A lot of people think that it’s about art-making alone. Art therapy is not just about art making. It’s also about the psychotherapy portion of it.”
Untrained practitioners may miss important emotional cues, particularly in children.
“A lot of artists think that they can do art therapy, but they don’t have the psychological framework to what we are looking out for, and what are the themes that could surface from the artwork or even from picking the medium,” Ms Loo added.
“Somebody who is untrained, this will be all lost in translation, and we’ll lose (the) opportunity to capture important things about what’s going on with the child.”
Some healthcare clusters have introduced safeguards to tackle such issues.