I'm going to try to create a poll here for the first time. I hope I succeed.

My question is: What is your favorite form of artistic expression? I ask this in response to a graduate student's survey I completed about art and mental illness. When I answered the questions, the term "art" seemed to refer mostly or even solely to visual arts.

I bet many of you who have been in the psychiatric hospital or Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) have attended an art therapy class. Again, by art therapy I refer to visual arts. Therapy classes such as music therapy or dance therapy were occasionally available at my psychiatric hospital, but never in the IOP. I have to say that I suck at visual arts and found that therapy class (mandatory almost every day) to be quite unpleasant, unlike almost all of my fellow patients. I did, however, love the music and dance therapy, but they were offered only at one hospital (not the IOPs) and rarely.

Sometimes in lieu of trying to paint, do collage, etc. in the art therapy, I asked if I could write. Luckily the therapist let me. I did the same thing in a grief counseling session when again the therapist asked us to draw.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is wonderful that people love visual arts, but I just felt it wasn't right for me.