The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

Schizophrenic pictures showed correlations between consistent and associated
moderate use of red and low yellow, green, blue and brown indicating multiple use of
colours, but from the results of the ANOVA, we can see that they used little of any
colour but red, so their pictures probably looked more monochromatic and bare.
Substance abusers tended to use only small amounts of muddy colours together (green
and brown), with a little bright colour (red or yellow) and lots of black, so their pictures
probably seemed dark and dramatic with sharp contrasts. Depressives used a little green
together with moderate black and bright colours so their pictures probably looked fairly
balanced. Colours used by patients with personality disorder showed balance in colour
but no associations; they used bright and dark colours moderately but little green and
mostly were not differentiable from the other groups. Blue and brown were used in
equally low quantities by all groups, but proportionally they would tend to add more to
the darker colours in the paintings of schizophrenics and substance abusers. There were
three obvious and important obvious discussion points in variations of use of colour
within groups in this study: (1) the use of green and (2) red in controls and schizophrenia
and the use of (3) black in all groups, but especially substance abusers and
schizophrenics. (4) Minor differences are discussed after.
Use of Green: Green was important in schizophrenic paintings. Green appeared with
all colours but black, especially yellow and multiple colours 300 . These findings are mildly
supported by impressionistic reports of a preference for, or inappropriate use of, green
300 Yellow was highly correlated with green and moderately with blue and brown, but not red. So given
that green was used most with yellow, and yellow turned up with blue and brown, multiple rather than
singular use of colours are indicated.
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