A veteran-focused art therapy program: co-research to strengthen art therapy effectiveness

Background Veterans experience a transition when they return home from military service and resume life as a civilian citizen. Transition refers to service members' passage from military life to civilian life, which often involves emotional, physical, and social changes. Aims The purpose of this participatory action research study was to address the treatment needs of transitioning veterans with three overarching goals: 1) to unite and empower veterans to contribute to the design of their own art therapy programme to meet their self-identified needs, 2) to contribute to a foundation of knowledge that will help shape future art therapy practices with veterans, and 3) to promote the advancement of art therapy within other organisations. Methods Through collective inquiry, the research team examined how veterans experience the art therapy programme in relationship to their needs and utilised PAR methods to identify ways to strengthen art therapy effectiveness. Results Participating veterans identified seven basic principles of art therapy that support healthy veteran transition from military to civilian life based on their personal experiences with art therapy and transition. Conclusions Co-research can yield rich knowledge and meaningful change by engaging the expertise of people with lived experience. Including art making as a research activity can provide a range of opportunities for researchers to engage in the creation of new knowledge. Implications for practice and research The implementation of the participatory action research framework described in this paper provides a case study illustration for other practitioner researchers that demonstrates the accessibility and value of co-research. Plain-language summary Veterans experience a transition when they return home from military service and resume life as a civilian citizen, or a resident who is no longer part of the Armed Forces. Veterans who participated as co-researchers in this study identified the term transition and described it as the passage from military to civilian live. They described that military-to-civilian transition often involved social, emotional and physical changes. The study was conducted by a group of researchers that included ten veterans of the United States Armed Forces and 1 art therapist using Participatory Action Research methodology, which brings together researchers and people who are impacted directly by the identified problem. A main goal of the study was to provide veterans an opportunity to provide input in the design of the art therapy programme where they received services. The researchers were also interested in finding new knowledge about how art therapy helps veterans. This new knowledge was meant to be shared in order to encourage more art therapy programming for veterans. The group of researchers worked together to study how they experienced services in the programme. By examining how well these services met their needs, veteran-researchers were able to recommend ways to improve the art therapy programme.