Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1129.01
Art Therapists
Plan or conduct art therapy sessions or programs to improve clients' physical, cognitive, or emotional well-being.
- US jobs
- 22,640 (SOC 29-1129 group, "Therapists, All Other")
- Median wage
- $77,930 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of art therapists?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Conduct art therapy sessions, providing guided self-expression experiences to help clients recover from, or cope with, cognitive, emotional, or physical impairments.
- Talk with clients during art or other therapy sessions to build rapport, acknowledge their progress, or reflect upon their reactions to the artistic process.
- Write treatment plans, case summaries, or progress or other reports related to individual clients or client groups.
- Assess client needs or disorders, using drawing, painting, sculpting, or other artistic processes.
- Design art therapy sessions or programs to meet client's goals or objectives.
- Observe and document client reactions, progress, or other outcomes related to art therapy.
- Develop individualized treatment plans that incorporate studio art therapy, counseling, or psychotherapy techniques.
- Establish goals or objectives for art therapy sessions in consultation with clients or site administrators.
- Select or prepare artistic media or related equipment or devices to accomplish therapy session objectives.
- Communicate client assessment findings and recommendations in oral, written, audio, video, or other forms.
- Customize art therapy programs for specific client populations, such as those in schools, nursing homes, wellness centers, prisons, shelters, or hospitals.
- Confer with other professionals on client's treatment team to develop, coordinate, or integrate treatment plans.
Other job titles for this occupation (18)
Activity Therapy Specialist · Art Psychotherapist · ATR (Registered Art Therapist) · ATR-BC (Board Certified Art Therapist) · Clinical Art Therapist · Creative Arts Therapist · Expressive Arts Therapist · Oncology Art Therapist · Therapist · Activity Therapist · Art Therapy Specialist · Certified Art Therapist · Creative Therapist · Expressive Therapist · Hospice Art Therapist · Medical Art Therapist · Outpatient Therapist · Rehabilitation Creative Therapist