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

principles, so some were included where their comments/experiences were
relevant to the range;
(b) Studies involved psychiatric patients 93 ;
(c) Studies examined patients' drawings or paintings 94 .
(d) Reports and papers in English.
Articles for review were selected from a computerised search of 3 databases and from a
manual search. The Psychlit, Medline and BIDS databases were searched using the
following search criteria:
(i) ART or DRAWING or PAINTING or PICTURE and THERAPY or
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY or PSYCHIAT* or SCHIZOPHRENI* or
PATIENT.
(ii) Not STATE-OF-THE; not SYMPTOM-PICTURE; not CLINICAL-PICTURE;
not CHILD* in DE; or PRESCHOOL in DE; or SCHOOL-AGE in DE; not
PICTURE-SORT*.
This strategy of searching anywhere in the abstract for significant words was not efficient
as much had to be eliminated by eye due to the context, but assigned descriptors often
did not mention artwork and studies of interest were classified under disparate categories.
There were considerable overlaps from the BIDS database and Medline with studies
93 There were many studies which used undiagnosed groups (including artists), sometimes described as
'screened' for psychiatric disturbance - the procedure remained ambiguous as did the disturbance. The
authors typically extrapolated their conclusions to psychiatric patients but as research this is meaningless,
and such studies were excluded.
94 But not drawing tests as part of a battery for a purpose which did not depend on the art score, for
example IQ, ability. Pain drawings and maps and some drawings, e.g. cubes, were excluded as the task
47