Music, Art, Drama or Dance Therapy? Choosing Between the Arts Therapies

There is no best arts therapy in general: the evidence differs far more by condition and outcome than by art form, so the sensible way to choose between music, art, drama and dance movement therapy is to start from the person, what they can do and what they might enjoy, and then check what the evidence says for the specific problem they have. That answer frustrates people who want a ranking, and it is the accurate one.

I am asked this more than almost anything else by families in the homes where I sing, usually in the form “would she be better off with the art one or the music one”. I run music sessions, so I am the wrong person to be neutral about it, which is why Rhian, who is a registered music therapist and has spent years arguing with colleagues in the other three professions, has been through every line below. Where a claim about effect appears it carries a tier (Tier 1 supported, Tier 2 promising but limited, Tier 3 practice and anecdote), explained on reading arts in health research.

The four protected titles, and the fifth profession outside them

In the UK, art psychotherapist, art therapist, dramatherapist and music therapist are protected titles; dance movement psychotherapist is not.

Anybody using one of the four protected titles must be on the HCPC register, which held 6,103 arts therapists in July 2026¹. Art therapist and art psychotherapist are two titles for one profession, which is why the common phrase “the three arts therapies” is wrong. Each of the three professions has its own professional body as well: the British Association for Music Therapy², the British Association of Art Therapists³ and the British Association of Dramatherapists⁴.

Dance movement psychotherapy is the odd one out. It is a postgraduate profession with its own training and standards, but the title is not protected by the HCPC. The Association for Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK runs its own accredited register instead⁵. That does not make the work less serious; it changes how you check a practitioner, which is covered at the end of this page.

What all four professions share matters more than what divides them. Each works from an assessment, agreed goals for a named person, notes, clinical supervision, a review and a planned ending. The art form is the medium; the structure is what makes it therapy rather than an activity.

How the four differ in the room

Music works through sound and rhythm made together, art through an image that lasts, drama through roles and stories, and dance movement through the body.

Music therapy usually centres on live music made by the client and the therapist together, often improvised, using voice and simple instruments that need no training. It suits people for whom timing, rhythm and sound carry meaning even when words have gone.

Art therapy gives the person materials and time to make an image, with the therapist present and paying attention to the process and to what is made. The picture is a physical thing that stays, usually kept safely by the therapist between sessions, and some people find that permanence steadying while others find it exposing.

Dramatherapy uses role play, story, objects and sometimes masks or puppets to explore experience at one remove, which can make difficult things easier to approach because they are happening to a character. It usually involves more talking and more being seen than the other three.

Dance movement psychotherapy works through movement and the body’s own patterns, with the therapist attending to how the person moves as well as what they say. It is not a dance class and nobody needs to dance well.

What the evidence says, modality by modality

The evidence does not rank the four, and the pattern across them is mixed results tied to specific conditions.

Music holds the site’s single strongest finding, and it is narrow. Rhythmic auditory stimulation after stroke improved gait velocity by 11.34 m/min (95% CI 8.40 to 14.28) across 9 trials and 268 participants at moderate quality, Tier 1⁶. In dementia, the 2025 Cochrane review found a small improvement in depressive symptoms, SMD -0.23 (95% CI -0.42 to -0.04) at moderate certainty (Tier 1), alongside moderate certainty evidence of no effect on agitation⁷. Neither result is a reason to choose music therapy for an unrelated problem.

Art has the largest UK trial in the field, MATISSE, which randomised 417 people with established schizophrenia to weekly group art therapy, activity groups or standard care, and found no difference between the arms on either primary outcome at 24 months⁸. That is Tier 3 of the tested and null kind, for referral to group art therapy in that population. It says nothing about individual art therapy or about other conditions, and art therapy for psychosis sets out what it does and does not show.

Dance movement for depression rests on one Cochrane review of 3 studies and 147 participants, with a whole sample result of SMD -0.67 (95% CI -1.40 to 0.05) at very low quality⁹. That is Tier 3 of the not adequately tested kind: too little to say it helps, and too little to say it does not. Dance for depression explains the mislabelled figure that circulates.

Drama has no locked effect figure on this site at all, which makes any effectiveness claim for dramatherapy Tier 3 here. That is a statement about the state of the evidence collected, not a verdict on the work.

Put side by side, this is the honest summary: the arts therapies are not a single treatment with a single evidence base, and choosing one because another family’s article said it “works” borrows a result that probably belongs to a different condition and a different outcome.

Practical questions that usually decide it

In practice the choice is usually made by the person’s abilities and preferences, and by who is actually available.

Five questions do most of the work. Can the person hold and use the materials, a beater, a brush, a pen, after a stroke or with arthritis? Is talking hard for them, which tips towards music, art or movement rather than drama? Do they dislike being watched, which can make drama and movement harder to begin with? Have they a history with one art form, a lifelong singer, someone who painted, someone who danced, that might make it feel familiar or, sometimes, too loaded? And is there anybody near you who practises it?

That last question often settles everything. Arts therapy provision is patchy, especially outside large cities, and NHS posts are tied to particular services, so “which one” is frequently answered by “the one the team has”. For private work the British Association for Music Therapy recommends a floor of from £52.00 upwards for an individual music therapy session²; there is no equivalent public figure for the other three professions, and nothing on this site attributes a fee to BAAT.

A good therapist in any of the four will tell you at assessment if they think another modality, or something other than an arts therapy, would suit the person better. In my experience the ones worth paying are the ones who say so.

Checking whoever you choose

Check the right register for the right profession, yourself, before the first session.

For a music therapist, art therapist, art psychotherapist or dramatherapist in the UK, search the HCPC register by name. If they are not on it, they cannot lawfully use the title. For a dance movement psychotherapist, check the ADMP UK register instead⁵. Professional body membership on its own is useful additional information and not a substitute for either. How to find a music therapist goes through the process, much of which applies to the other three professions as well.

None of this is a reason to change or stop treatment somebody already has. An arts therapy is offered alongside care, not instead of it, and which one suits a particular person is best worked out with the therapist who assesses them and the clinicians who know them.