Xie Yuxing, Sun Xianhua
College of Art and Design, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China.
Front Psychol. 2025 Jul 30;16:1617700. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1617700. eCollection 2025.
In the field of mental health, the integration of art and psychotherapy has become an important development direction. Its core mechanism lies in promoting individuals to achieve emotional release, cognitive reconstruction, and social function recovery through the creative expression of art forms, which has given rise to the important practical field of art therapy. This study aims to systematically sort out the research status and development trends in the field of art therapy from 2005 to 2024 through knowledge mapping analysis, providing references for theoretical innovation and practice standardization in this field.
Based on the Web of Science core collection data sources, the CiteSpace bibliometric tool was used for knowledge mapping analysis of art therapy-related research. By searching keywords such as "Art Healing" and "Art Therapy," 1799 valid articles were finally included after strict screening. The analysis was carried out from multiple dimensions: basic information (changes in the number of publications, journal distribution, regional and author-institution distribution) and research content (keyword co-occurrence, cluster mining, and timeline deduction).
Art therapy research from 2005 to 2024 showed a phased growth characteristic, successively going through a germination period, a stable period, and a rapid development period. In terms of geographical distribution, Europe and the United States, represented by the United States and the United Kingdom, contributed 63% of the core literature. Research hotspots gradually shifted from early basic intervention research to the exploration of technological integration and ethical issues. It was also found that this field is highly related to multiple disciplines such as psychology and medicine, but there are limitations such as imbalanced development of cross-cultural theories.
Although significant progress has been made in the theory and practice of art therapy, there are still structural problems such as uneven development of cross-cultural theories, insufficient connection between technical applications and practice guidelines, and inadequate research coverage on special groups. Future research can focus on the in-depth integration of theory and practice, cross-cultural theoretical integration, construction of multi-dimensional evaluation systems, and application of virtual reality technology, providing new paths to promote theoretical innovation and practice standardization in art therapy.
在心理健康领域，艺术与心理治疗的融合已成为一个重要的发展方向。其核心机制在于通过艺术形式的创造性表达，促进个体实现情绪释放、认知重建和社会功能恢复，由此催生了艺术治疗这一重要的实践领域。本研究旨在通过知识图谱分析，系统梳理2005年至2024年艺术治疗领域的研究现状与发展趋势，为该领域的理论创新和实践规范化提供参考。
基于科学网核心合集数据源，运用CiteSpace文献计量工具对艺术治疗相关研究进行知识图谱分析。通过检索“艺术治愈”“艺术治疗”等关键词，经严格筛选最终纳入1799篇有效文章。从多个维度进行分析：基本信息（出版物数量变化、期刊分布、地区和作者机构分布）和研究内容（关键词共现、聚类挖掘和时间线推演）。
2005年至2024年的艺术治疗研究呈现出阶段性增长特征，先后经历了萌芽期、稳定期和快速发展期。在地理分布方面，以美国和英国为代表的欧美地区贡献了63%的核心文献。研究热点逐渐从早期的基础干预研究转向技术整合和伦理问题的探索。还发现该领域与心理学、医学等多个学科高度相关，但存在跨文化理论发展不均衡等局限。
尽管艺术治疗的理论和实践取得了显著进展，但仍存在跨文化理论发展不均衡、技术应用与实践指南联系不足以及对特殊群体研究覆盖不够等结构性问题。未来研究可聚焦于理论与实践的深度融合、跨文化理论整合、多维评价体系构建以及虚拟现实技术应用，为推动艺术治疗的理论创新和实践规范化提供新路径。
