Medical Art Psychotherapy in Psychological Medicine

Integrating neuroscience, art psychotherapy, and cultural knowledge systems at the bedside and beyond

Hospital Practice

Isabelle Rizo is a Medical Art Psychotherapist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, where she works across acute care, the pediatric intensive care unit, neurology, and psychosomatic medicine.

Her clinical work centers on psychosocial assessment through verbal and non-verbal art making, trauma-informed intervention, family support, and existential distress with medically complex pediatric populations. She functions as an integrated member of interdisciplinary care teams — contributing clinical insight at the intersection of medicine, psychology, and cultural context.

She is trained to see what standard biomedical frameworks miss: the symbolic, relational, and cultural dimensions of illness that shape how patients and families experience disease, treatment, and recovery.

Medical Syncretism Framework

Medical Syncretism is Isabelle’s clinical framework for working with multicultural populations in medical settings. Grounded in Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk) — an indigenous epistemological framework developed by Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall — medical syncretism holds that biomedical and cultural knowledge systems are not in opposition. They are complementary sources of clinical truth.

In practice, this means assessment and intervention that takes a family’s cultural understanding of illness, their ritual and relational frameworks for healing, and their symbolic language — alongside neurobiological and psychological frameworks. Neither is subordinate to the other.

Group Private Practice

Working with Isabelle is an invitation to understand yourself through the interconnected lenses of psychology, culture, the body, creativity, and lived experience. Rather than viewing distress as something to eliminate, she approaches symptoms with curiosity—asking what anxiety, grief, chronic illness, trauma, or life transitions may be communicating about your history, relationships, identity, and environment. Her work is grounded in the belief that healing occurs not only through insight, but through developing a more compassionate relationship with yourself and your body.

As a clinical art psychotherapist, Isabelle integrates psychodynamic psychotherapy, expressive arts, neuroscience, narrative medicine, multicultural psychology, and trauma-informed care. Sessions may include conversation, image-making, journaling, metaphor, mindfulness, guided visualization, somatic awareness, Internal Family Systems–informed exploration, and creative reflection, depending on each client's needs. Art-making is always an invitation rather than a requirement; no artistic experience is necessary.

Drawing from her experience in pediatric hospital medicine, community mental health, and private practice, Isabelle specializes in working with thoughtful adults navigating anxiety, grief, chronic illness, psychosomatic symptoms, identity, immigration and diaspora, burnout, and questions of meaning and purpose. She is particularly drawn to clients who have spent years caring for others, succeeding professionally, or intellectualizing their experiences, yet long for a deeper sense of integration and authenticity.

Rather than offering quick fixes, Isabelle creates a collaborative space where insight can become embodied change. Together, clients explore the stories they have inherited, the patterns they have survived, and the possibilities they are beginning to imagine. The goal is not simply symptom reduction, but a life that feels more coherent, connected, and aligned with one's values, relationships, and sense of purpose.

For Clinicians & Institutions