Peer-reviewed article
Artmaking in Elementary School Art Therapy: Associations with Pre-Treatment Behavioral Problems and Therapy Outcomes
Sharon Snir ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This study followed 77 elementary school students receiving art therapy in Israeli schools. The students completed a questionnaire about their experience of artmaking three times during the therapy year. Parents and teachers rated the students' behavioral and emotional problems. Students with more externalizing and mixed problems before therapy reported a less positive experience of artmaking in the first month. The students' early experience of artmaking predicted improvement in teacher-reported internalizing problems.
Key points
- 77 elementary school students in art therapy in Israel took part.
- Students completed the Art Based Intervention Questionnaire three times during the therapy year.
- Parents (CBCL) and homeroom teachers (TRF) reported on behavioral and emotional problems.
- Pre-treatment externalizing and mixed problems were inversely correlated with the artmaking experience in the first month of therapy.
- Artmaking experience at the first time point was the significant predictor of gain scores on teacher-reported internalizing problems.
Limitations
The abstract describes associations in one group of students with no comparison group, so it cannot show that art therapy or artmaking caused any improvement. The authors call the findings initial support, and the abstract gives no effect sizes or details on how generalisable the sample is.
Abstract
Engaging in artmaking is one of the key components of art therapy. Theoretical conceptualizations posit that artmaking is not only influenced by the mental state of the artmaker, but can also modify it. The quantitative longitudinal study reported here examined these assumptions in the context of school art therapy. Seventy-seven elementary school students in art therapy in Israel completed the Art Based Intervention Questionnaire (ABI) three times during the therapy year. Their parents and homeroom teachers reported on the students’ behavioral and emotional problems on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL for parents, and TRF version for teachers). The results indicated an inverse correlation between the students’ externalizing and mixed problems before starting treatment and these clients’ experiences of artmaking during the first month of therapy. A regression model for predicting gain scores on the TRF internalizing problem indices was significant, whereas the significant regression predictor was the students’ experience of artmaking at T1. These findings provide initial support for an association between the experience of artmaking and mental state, and an improvement in mental state, and are discussed in relation to the context of school art therapy.