Doris Arrington, Ed.D., ATR-BC

For the past 30 years Dr. Doris Arrington, a California licensed psychologist, a Board Certified Art Therapist and a Senior Fulbright Specialist has been actively and passionately engaged in the expressive arts as an art psychotherapist, and an academician. She has been active both locally and nationally for over 30 years helping to establish best practices for health care and educational standards at the graduate level. During this time she Chaired the Art Therapy Psychology Department at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, Ca where over 1500 students have graduated qualifying to sit for Marriage Family Therapy licensing in California and Art Therapy registration throughout the USA. They are also qualified to serve as counselors in the United States Military.

In 2000, Dr. Arringtonʼs academic career path took a sharp turn. She was invited to go with a health care team to the Ukraine. She was not prepared to observe and meet the thousands of traumatized children and young adults who had fled their dangerous homes to live on the streets of Kiev. Since that time she has returned 12 times alone and with teams to work with children and teach staff in orphanages and state shelters how to use art to facilitate the healing of broken hearts and minds; to defeat real and imagined enemies; to instill courage, and to motivate success in life tasks. In Thailand she used art materials to work with substance abusers. At an orphanage in Mexico she taught orphanage staff how to use crayons to facilitate language. In China, where she has traveled 4 times, she worked with medical teams who treat hearing impaired children and youth. Currently, working with CHART, Community Healing Through Art, she is putting a team together to work with survivors of the recent earthquake near Chang Du. In the past she, with others, have taught country doctors within their training schools how to help families and patients in China and Tibet. In China, she met young adults who had been sex trafficked and faced horrific trauma. She used art as a language to exacerbate healing. In 2007 she led a team of five art therapists to Ethiopia where for ten days, they taught staff and worked with participants at Ellita, an agency that rehabilitates and cares for young and poor former sex workers who often suffer with HIV/AIDS. In the past year, besides teaching at Notre Dame de Namur University Dr. Arrington has taught staff or keynoted conferences in China, Ethiopia, Ireland, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the USA.

Traveling around the world, besides finding pain, suffering and evil, Dr. Arrington has found compassionate people who are looking for ways to meet the worldʼs needs and restore hope to hurting people. Today, she finds teaching others how to serve suffering people through out the world is her calling. Dr. Arrington has written two books, Home is Where the Art Is and Art, Angst and Trauma.

Conference Lecture 1
Pscyhology - the new frontier in missions

Conference Lecture 2
Art Therapy

Contact information for Doris Arrington: daarrington@sbcglobal.net