Art Therapy Support Groups
Support for Patients & Families

Children's Art Therapy Support Group (CATS)
The Children's Art Therapy Support Group (CATS) helps children learn to cope with and accept their cancer diagnosis or that of a loved one through education, peer support and creative art expression.

The goals of the group sessions are to:

• Create a safe, non-threatening space where children can openly express their feelings through art making and verbal sharing


• Provide art activities that help the child move through the emotions associated with illness


• Reduce common behavioral responses in children who are experiencing a family illness (e.g. sleep disturbance, decreased concentration, regressive behaviors, and changes in school performance)

This class meets on Tuesdays at the Sutter Cancer Center from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. This program is provided free of charge. For more information, and to register, please call (916) 454-6555.

Children's Bereavement Art Group (Sacramento and Roseville)
This peer support group, facilitated by trained art therapists and volunteers, assists grieving children (ages 4 through 17) in expressing emotions over the recent death of a loved one by utilizing art and other creative outlets.

The goals of the group are to:

• Create a safe, sacred space where children and teens can gather with peers to experience validation for their loss.


• Provide a variety of art media so that participants may express their own unique loss experience in a healthy and constructive way


• Assist the whole family with the grief process through role modeling, normalization and education

The group meets for ten sessions, held every other week over a five-month period from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. This program is provided free of charge to all grieving children and teens in the greater Sacramento region. For more information and to register a child, call (916) 454-6555 (Sacramento) or (916) 797-7850 (Roseville)

Healing Images: Art Therapy Support Group for Adult Cancer Patients(Sacramento)
This group offers creative ways for adults to deal with the many changes that illness may bring to their lives. The goals of the group are to:

• Promote the creative process, offering a variety of art media to channel personal experiences into a visible and a manageable form;


• Gather patients together as artmakers, experiencing the healing and integrative power of the nonverbal


• Foster sacred, ritual space where artmaking restores and nurtures the whole person

There is no charge for Sutter Cancer Center patients. The group meets at the Sutter Cancer Center, Sacramento on the first and third Thursdays of every month from 4:30 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. For more information and to register, please call (916) 454-6555.