When facilitating group art therapy for young adult male inmates in prison, response art helped an art therapist to build therapeutic bonds and maintain self-care. Both artmaking in-session and post-session enabled the art therapist to traverse relational distance, nurture trust, and create social bonds in the group. By reflecting on her response…

This randomized controlled study examined the effects of creating open circle mandalas with divergent instruction type (distraction and reflection) and medium type (resistive and fluid) on state anxiety, mood, and mindfulness. The design followed a 2 (instruction type) x 2 (medium type) x 3 (time) mixed experimental design. Reflective writing…

Teaching 5-7-year old children with fear problems to cope with them is a substantial issue for many parents. The techniques that rapidly and effectively correct problematic child fears are essential for child psychologists. This study aims to reveal how to work effectively with children's fears through short-term psychological support. A total of…

The Artopia: Creative Healing with Veterans program was a collaboration between the University of Texas Arlington's Art + Art History Department, Department of Psychology, and Veterans Assistance Center along with our community partner The Art Station. The objective of this pilot study was to examine how art therapy could benefit veterans' mood…

This publication presents the qualitative findings from a mixed-method pilot study on three- and four-drawing protocols for chronic pain, which have demonstrated significant positive quantitative results. For this report, thematic analysis and magnitude coding of drawing titles, narratives, and characteristics including resource representations…

Nostalgic memories are highly social and revisiting them increases social connectedness and motivation. The present study offers a naturalistic approach to studying the social experience of nostalgia. Participants created scrapbooks in groups across three sessions over a period of six weeks. Nostalgia proneness, meaning, and social connection were…

Women hospitalized on an antepartum unit can benefit from an open studio art therapy group. A case description follows six women over five group sessions. Several common experiences that occurred throughout the sessions included isolation/boredom, uncertainty, lack of control, and family. Art therapy in a group setting allowed the women to express…

This study examined the effects of group art therapy on self-concept and peer relationships among adolescents using a mixed-method approach. Twelve recruited adolescents from a high school in Northern Taiwan attended weekly 2-h group art therapy sessions for 8 weeks. Through a discovery-oriented approach incorporating focus group interviews and…

School anxiety is one of the main problems faced by teachers and school counselors. This problem attracts special attention for teachers - practitioners, as it is a clear sign of school maladaptation in children, which adversely affects all spheres of their life: not only the studies but also communication, both inside and outside the school,…

We investigated whether artmaking improves mood, and if so, whether this effect is best explained by "catharsis" or "redirection." In Experiment 1, participants viewed tragic images and then either drew a picture based on their feelings or copied shapes. Those who drew exhibited more positive mood after drawing; those who copied shapes did not.…

Violent incidents occur frequently in schools and suicide ranks second to accidents as the leading cause of death among adolescents. The purpose of this presentation is to summarize the findings of six studies that used a stimulus-drawing task for access to fantasies, thoughts, and feelings. The studies were based on the theory that the task can…