Creative Arts Therapies in Grief: A Qualitative Study of Mental Health Professionals’ Practices and Meanings

Traditional verbal therapies may encounter limitations in addressing the profound and often unspeakable nature of grief, and Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) offer alternative clinical approaches that expand the therapeutic space through non-verbal and symbolic modalities. This study explores the clinical applicability of CATs in adult bereavement, focusing on mental health professionals’ perspectives on their potential to promote meaning reconstruction and adaptation to loss. A qualitative study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with 11 mental health professionals (psychologists, psychotherapists, and psychiatrists) with specific expertise in CATs, and data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Five key themes emerged: (1) “Beyond words”, providing access to pre-verbal and sensory dimensions of grief; (2) “Symbolic transformation of emotions”, where the artwork acts as a mediator making pain observable and thinkable; (3) “Remembering and reconstructing”, facilitating continuing bonds and identity reconstruction; (4) “The importance of the relationship”, highlighting the therapeutic alliance and the group as a space of containment; and (5) “The subjectivity of loss”, emphasizing the need for flexible, non-standardized interventions. CATs provide a distinct clinical space in which grief is not only narrated but also represented and transformed, and their effectiveness appears to depend on the therapist’s capacity to adapt interventions to patients’ subjectivity and on the quality of the therapeutic alliance.