Art therapy is a distinct discipline that incorporates creative methods of expression through visual art media. Art therapy, as a creative arts therapy profession, originated in the fields of art and psychotherapy and may vary in definition. Art therapy encourages creative expression through painting, drawing, or modeling. It may work by providing persons with a safe space to express their feelings and allow them to feel more in control over their lives.

There are three main ways that art therapy is employed. The first one is called analytic art therapy. Analytic art therapy is based on the theories that come from analytical psychology, and in more cases, psychoanalysis. Analytic art therapy focuses on the client, the therapist, and the ideas that are transferred between both of them through art. Another way that art therapy is used in art psychotherapy. This approach focuses more on the psychotherapists and their analyses of their clients' artwork verbally. The last way art therapy is looked at is through the lens of art as therapy. Some art therapists practicing art as therapy believe that analyzing the client's artwork verbally is not essential, therefore they stress the creation process of the art instead. In all approaches to art therapy, the art therapist's client utilizes paint, paper and pen, clay, sand, fabric, or other media to understand and express their emotions.

Art therapy can be used to help people improve cognitive and sensory motor function, self-esteem, self-awareness, and emotional resilience. It may also aide in resolving conflicts and reduce distress.

Current art therapy includes a vast number of other approaches, such as person-centered, cognitive, behavioral, Gestalt, narrative, Adlerian, and family. The tenets of art therapy involve humanism, creativity, reconciling emotional conflicts, fostering self-awareness, and personal growth.

Art therapy improves positive psychology by helping people find well-being through different unique pathways that add meaning to one's life to help improve positivity.

In the history of mental health treatment, art therapy (combining studies of psychology and art) is still a relatively new field. This type of unconventional therapy is used to cultivate self-esteem and awareness, improve cognitive and motor abilities, resolve conflicts or stress, and inspire resilience in patients. It invites sensory, kinesthetic, perceptual, and sensory symbolization to address issues that verbal psychotherapy cannot reach. Although art therapy is a relatively young therapeutic discipline, its roots lie in the use of the arts in the 'moral treatment' of psychiatric patients in the late 18th century.

Art therapy as a profession began in the mid-20th century, arising independently in English-speaking and European countries. Art had been used at the time for various reasons: communication, inducing creativity in children, and in religious contexts. The early art therapists who published accounts of their work acknowledged the influence of aesthetics, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, rehabilitation, early childhood education, and art education, to varying degrees, on their practices.

British artist Adrian Hill coined the term "art therapy" in 1942. Hill, recovering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium, discovered the therapeutic benefits of drawing and painting while convalescing. He wrote that the value of art therapy lay in "completely engrossing the mind (as well as the fingers)…releasing the creative energy of the frequently inhibited patient", which enabled the patient to "build up a strong defense against his misfortunes". He suggested artistic work to his fellow patients. That began his art therapy work, which was documented in 1945 in his book, Art Versus Illness.