What's best for whom? Exploring the evidence base for art therapy assessment

This chapter reviews the current evidence base for assessment in art therapy and considers how it might be developed. It explores how ‘assessment’ is understood: is it a subjective, empathic encounter or a more objective, perhaps diagnostic evaluation? This is discussed in relation to research on art therapy assessments in the UK and USA, the different aims of assessment, the contexts in which art therapists work and the clients they work with. A sequence of referral, encounter and selection is identified and emergent, differential approaches to assessment in relation to treatment are described. However, the author argues that assessment in art therapy remains unsystematic and without a solid evidence base and proposes that a pluralistic evidence base should be developed which, whilst systematic and particular to client population, is neither prescriptive nor constrained by diagnostic criteria.