Loyola Marymount University

What this program actually is

OrientationClinical art therapy integrated with systemic marital and family therapy

This is not an MFT program with an art therapy elective attached — art therapy is the spine, and the two credentials are welded together at every level. The degree is the M.A. in Marital and Family Therapy with Specialized Training in Art Therapy, 57–60 semester units, accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs on the recommendation of the Accreditation Council for Art Therapy Education (CAAHEP/ACATE) — the specialized accreditation that makes the graduate eligible for the Art Therapy Credentials Board's ATR registration, on top of the California LMFT educational requirements. There is no version of the degree without the art therapy. It shows up in the studio courses (MFTH 601 Art Therapy Studio, MFTH 690 Art Therapy Studio: Professional Ethics and Identity), in assessment (MFTH 640 Psychological Tests & Art Therapy Assessment), in the DEI requirement (MFTH 692 Art-Based Exploration of DEI in Clinical Treatment), and — most tellingly — in all three practicum courses, each of whose catalog description reads 'supervised application of marital and family theory and psychotherapeutic techniques, including the application of art therapy, in field placement.' The gate is at the front door too: admission requires 18 semester units of studio art coursework that 'demonstrates proficiency and disciplined commitment in art making,' a portfolio of up to ten images, and a roughly 300-word written analysis of the psychological content of one of your own artworks. No other California MFT program asks for that.

The lineage is the oldest of its kind on the West Coast and among the oldest anywhere. Helen Landgarten, a painter, began developing the approach in 1964 working with geriatric and hospital patients, ran a trial program at Cedars-Sinai in 1967, and started a certificate program at Immaculate Heart College in 1972; the master's launched in 1973 and 'The first class graduated in 1975.' When IHC closed for financial reasons in 1980 the whole program moved to LMU as a separate department. It expanded to 60 units in 1988, opened the Helen B. Landgarten Art Therapy Clinic in 2007, and added the Art Therapy Research Institute in 2012. That fifty-year continuity is the reason the department has its own clinic, its own research institute, its own Mexico-based international courses (MFTH 620/622/629) and a summer arts workshop that has 'impacted upwards of 500 young people and their families' — infrastructure a newer program simply cannot assemble.

The cost is the honest counterweight. LMU charges $1,814 per semester hour for Marriage and Family Therapy in the 2026–2027 bulletin, so 57–60 units is roughly $103,000–$109,000 in tuition alone, before fees, art materials or living costs in Los Angeles — the top of the range for a California MFT degree. And the ATR is not conferred at graduation: the ATCB describes the ATR's '1000/100 requirements,' meaning post-degree supervised direct client contact and supervision hours accrued after you finish, running alongside (not instead of) the BBS's 3,000 hours for the LMFT. You are buying a two-credential pathway, and you pay for both in years as well as dollars.

The program’s own page →

See it and hear it

Program overview

The courses that define it

Every California program teaches law and ethics, assessment and a survey of theories. These are the courses that are not on every list — the ones that tell you what this particular faculty believes therapy is. The quoted text is the catalog’s own; the note underneath each one is mine.

The whole degree, term by term

What you would actually take, in the order you would take it. Sequences change; check the current catalog before you count on any single term.

Cohort program, fall entry only, offered as a two-year or a three-year track with the same courses redistributed. The two-year track is shown below; the three-year track spreads the identical requirements over six semesters plus a required Summer Session I, delaying the first practicum from the second semester to the fourth. Summer Session I (MFTH 611 and 641) is required in both tracks; Summer Session II (the international courses) is optional. Units below are from the program's published course schedule; the 2026–2027 bulletin lists the degree as a minimum of 57–60 semester hours. course sequence ↗

57-60units in total

How practicum actually works

Californian clinical training runs in two legally distinct stages, and the difference decides what a program can and cannot do for you.

A trainee is a student. You see clients while still enrolled, at a site your program approves, supervised by someone the site provides. This is practicum, and it is the stage a program controls. An associate — registered with the Board after you graduate — is no longer a student, is usually paid, and is working toward the 3,000 hours the license requires. The Board renamed this stage from “intern” to “associate” in 2018, so any page still saying “MFT intern” is quoting something out of date.

Hours you bank as a trainee count toward the 3,000, up to a limit, which is why the size and quality of a program’s placement matters long after graduation: a student who leaves with 1,000 hours starts the associate years a third of the way through them, and one who leaves with the 225-hour minimum starts at the beginning.

Practicum is also where a degree most often stops being on schedule. Coursework runs on a calendar the school controls; placement does not. The questions that matter are therefore all about who owns the problem of finding you a site — and the answer differs enormously between programs on this list.

What happens after the degree →

The school runs its own training clinic.  Helen B. Landgarten Art Therapy Clinic (HBL Art Therapy Clinic) Owning a clinic and holding a seat in it are different things, so this sits beside the model above rather than replacing it.

Practicum runs across three consecutive terms and 11 units — MFTH 617 (3 units), MFTH 618 Capstone II (4 units) and MFTH 619 Clinical Studies Capstone III (4 units) — and it begins unusually early, in the second semester of the two-year track, meaning students are seeing clients less than a year in. The weekly load steps up deliberately: sixteen hours a week in the first practicum, twenty hours a week in each of the next two, against a floor of 350 accumulated hours 'providing art therapy services to individuals, groups, and/or families.' Note that the required hours are counted as art therapy service hours, not generic clinical hours — that framing is what feeds the ATR pathway as well as the BBS one. Supervision is doubled: the program states that both clinical supervision and art therapy supervision are provided, which is the practical mechanism by which one placement generates hours toward two different credentials. The department runs its own site, the Helen B. Landgarten Art Therapy Clinic, whose mission is 'to serve the community by offering art therapy interventions to underserved children and families who have experienced trauma or are facing serious obstacles in life'; it contracts with outreach programs, schools and other organizations across Los Angeles County, and trainees deliver services there alongside licensed art therapists. A minimum grade of B in each practicum course is required to advance and to graduate. What the program does not publish is who initiates the placement — whether the department assigns students to clinic and contracted sites or whether students apply out — so the who_places field is left null rather than guessed. source ↗

Will this degree travel

What the Board requires of any qualifying degree →

What it is, on paper

Founded 1975; Art Therapy Clinic; Art Therapy Research Institute; International Summer Program. Prepares for both CA MFT licensure and national art therapy registration.

The program’s own page →

What it costs

The figure below is the institution’s own, from its own page, with the year it applies to. Multiply the per-unit rate by the actual unit count and add campus fees before comparing it with anything.

$1,814 a unit 2026-27 — source

What a month costs to live on while you study →

Getting in

GRE (Optional) Some students may choose to take the GRE to further evidence their ability to succeed in academic settings, especially when they feel their GPA does not reflect their current abilities or dedication. A score of 158 on the verbal portion of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) is recommended. source →

admissions page ↗

How its graduates did on the Board’s exam

Counting every attempt rather than only first attempts, the figure is 89% across 140 sittings here, against 66% statewide. First attempts are the fairer comparison — counting resits measures how many tries people needed rather than how many passed, and it penalises a school whose graduates keep going.

On the separate California Law and Ethics exam, 80% of this school’s 144 first-time candidates passed, against 80% statewide.

Recorded by the Board as Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. Its list is kept by institution and its names lag: a school that has since renamed appears under the name it had when the candidates sat.

July 2018 - December 2024, pooled (13 semiannual BBS reports) · the Board’s published exam results by school →

What people say about it

Quoted where the wording carries the meaning, linked in every case, opening in a new window. The tags are my reading of each source, not a measurement, and the unflattering ones are here too.

What to ask before you apply

None of these are answered on a program page, and all five change what the degree is actually worth to you.

What I could not establish

Everything above is sourced. These are the things I looked for and could not establish - take them to admissions, and note how quickly and precisely they answer.

• The program does not publish who initiates practicum placement — whether the department places students into the Landgarten Clinic and its contracted sites or whether students apply out to sites themselves. 'who_places' is left null rather than inferred.
• No published couple/family sub-minimum within the 350 practicum hours. The requirement is stated as art therapy services to 'individuals, groups, and/or families' without a relational floor, unlike California programs that break out a specific relational-hours count. The BBS relational-hours requirement would still apply at the licensure level.
• Cohort size is not published anywhere on the program site; the 18–21 figure is inferred from employment-outcome tables, not stated as an admissions number.
• The full ATR education and experience standards could not be fetched — atcb.org returned 404s on its credential-requirements pages. The '1000/100' figure comes from ATCB's ATR Bridge Plan page, which references 'the ATR's 1000/100 requirements' in passing; the authoritative breakdown of what portion of those hours can be earned pre- versus post-degree was not obtainable.
• The bulletin lists MFTH 621 as 1–3 units and MFTH 630 as 2–3 units, which is why the degree total is a range (57–60) rather than a fixed number.
• No credible student discussion (Reddit, GradCafe, Student Doctor Network) could be gathered — the research session's web-search budget was exhausted and direct Reddit API access was blocked. 'voices' is empty rather than absent-because-nothing-exists.