My name is Ingrid Pénzes. As a high school student I hesitated between studying art and psychology. During my preliminary training at art school, I heard about the art therapy program; I knew immediately that it was on the intersection of the two things that interested me: art and mental health. After graduating in 1999, I worked as an art therapist in the psychiatric care of people with mild intellectual disabilities and highly disturbed behaviour. I think this is where my fascination with art therapy assessment originated; these people were not particularly good at verbally expressing what was going on, and many existing diagnostic tests were not appropriate. In the complexity of their needs, it turned out that the way they made art provided a lot of diagnostic information.

In addition to my work as an art therapist, I studied Mental Health Sciences, of which I obtained my master degree in 2006. This greatly enriched my knowledge and vision of mental health and sowed the seed for conducting research. And in 2003 I started as a lecturer of the bachelor arts therapies program of which I was head of the bachelor program from 2017 until 2021. In 2020 I got my PhD in Social Sciences on the relationship between art and mental health. For me an excellent opportunity to contribute to knowledge development for both education and clinical practice. And on this cutting edge I still very much enjoy and believe in the cross-pollination between practice, research and education. I now use my experiences in practice, research and education to shape to my motivation: to make scientific insights accessible to a wide audience.

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