The subject of this research is the aesthetic consciousness as a predictor of the effectiveness of art therapy in coping with stress. The goal of this article consists in studying the aesthetic consciousness as a predictor of the effectiveness of art therapy in dealing with stressful conditions of the individual. The following empirical methods were employed in the course of research: free descriptions technique of D. A. Leontiev, the scale of resistance to sources of stress of E. V. Raspopin; and Spearman's rank correlation criterion for statistical verification of determined trends and data analysis. The research involved 44 respondents – the students of the faculty of Philology of Sevastopol State University, aged from 17 to 23. It is established that resistance to certain sources of stress is clearly associated with the peculiarities of aesthetic consciousness of the individual; the following dependency is traced: the freer the subject feels in describing an aesthetic object, and the more diverse are his aesthetic reasoning, the higher is his stress resistance level in accordance with the component “Self-others” , and at the same time the lower is his resistance to stressors “the Self”. Therefore, in implementation of art therapy techniques for dealing with stressful conditions of the individual, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the development of aesthetic consciousness of the individual, readiness and ability to work with the complex visual stimuli. The scientific novelty of lies in revealing the role of aesthetic consciousness of the individual as a predictor of the effectiveness of art therapy in coping with stress.