Abstract: The objective of this research is to investigate whether an Open Studio-Based Expressive Arts Therapy Group has an impact on the mood of hospital psychiatric inpatients in an acute care setting. Patients participating in a weekly Expressive Arts Therapy Group completed the Profile on Mood States Brief (POMS-B) Form to assess mood states before and after group participation. In addition, a true and false questionnaire was given to participants post-group to gather information about their individual experiences. Thirty-six patients participated in the study. Partcipation in the group was significantly associated with a reduction in the POMS-B Total Mood Disturbance score, sonsistent with a decrease in negative mood states (POMS-B t(35)=4.06003, p < .05).
The Expressive Arts Therapy Group is an open-format session and all admitted patients are welcome to participate. By utilizing an existing treatment program known as the Expressive Arts Therapy Group, participants were recruited for the research study based on their ability to provide consent and interest in exploring the expressive arts.
As serious research in and around expressive therapies flourishes as never before, this four-volume set from Routledge's new Major Themes in Mental Health series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Edited by a leading scholar, the collection assembles foundational and canonical work, together with innovative and cutting-edge applications and interventions. For novices, the collection will be particularly useful as an essential database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. And, for more advanced scholars and practitioners, it will be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar--and sometimes overlooked--texts. For both, Expressive Therapies will be valued as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource. Information provided by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Volume 1: Poetry Therapy
Volume 2: Music Therapy
Volume 3: Dance/Movement Therapy and Drama Therapy
Volume 4: Art Therapy and Integrated Arts Therapy
(see item 115 for 'Expressive Arts Therapy Group Helps Improve Mood State in an Acute Care Psychiatric Setting' by Grace Chiu, Janine Hancock & Andrea Waddell
A documentary about the workings of a psychiatry inpatient unit in downtown Toronto seen through the eyes of current patients being treated for mental illness and former patients who revisit the unit now that they're well.
The book explores the use of a well-known projective drawing technique, Draw a Person in the Rain, in combination with a follow-up exercise I created called Draw a Person in the Rain with Changes. I sometimes refer to the combination of the two as the two-part exercise. I used this exercise with male adolescent offenders in open and closed custody facilities in order to help me understand their personality traits and defensive blocking styles more quickly.
When I came to work at the open custody facility for juvenile offenders I knew that I would be working with a notoriously defensive, resistant population with whom I would only be allowed to spend half an hour a week for a few weeks or, at most, a few months. Therefore, I felt that it would be beneficial, to both myself and the young offenders, to use a tool that could help reveal quickly what lay beneath the defenses they manifested. By achieving this, I hoped to be able to improve the self-awareness of the youths before they left custody and returned to the difficult environments from which they had come in order to give them a better chance to avoid re-offending.
Over the years when I used this two-part exercise, I rarely asked the youth to do the drawings in a systematic, "scientific, or methodological" way. For instance, some of the drawings were done on very large pieces of paper, others were done on small pieces, and in a few cases both drawings were done on one sheet. I also let the youth choose...