I had someone who called themselves an art therapist, who was actually someone who had taught art to small kids, but not as a qualified teacher, and who was studying counselling at university, who was trying to get me to draw things but instead of asking me for insight into the drawings, she critiqued my style and told me that what I was describing was wrong.

For example, she asked me to draw some geometric shapes, and I drew a picture of the Hiroshima Peace Dome and the ruins of a church in Nagasaki. The message I was trying to convey, from a mental health perspective, is the strength of those buildings in the face of adversity and destruction. Instead, she told me that I should draw a cross on the roof of the church.

Being able to draw and being able to interpret drawings as a counsellor are two totally different things. And art therapy and art lessons are not the same thing. I know that there are good art therapists, and my friend's daughter is one, and she was horrified when I told her what this other one had done.