Art therapy from the perspective of management and quality sciences

Art therapy is a field of activity with both practical and theoretical foundations although the latter are not precisely defined. Management and quality sciences, as well as economics, include management in the healthcare sector as one of their areas of interest. Despite a wealth of literature on the subject of management in healthcare, no in-depth research on art therapy as a specific form of delivery of the therapeutic process has been conducted so far. The aim of this article is to identify potential areas for further interdisciplinary research linking the field of management and quality with health sciences and education sciences (bearing in mind that art therapy is not a separate, autonomous scientific discipline). In order to achieve this we conducted a comparative analysis of selected concepts of management and quality sciences with the scope of the subject matter of art therapy, and as a qualitative method of literature review we chose the deductive method. The outcome of the study is the development of a proposed set of areas for further interdisciplinary research linking management and quality sciences with the sciences that include art therapy. The research findings presented here highlight numerous areas of overlap between art therapy and management and quality sciences, which hold potential for application in art therapy practice and theory.