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

3 13 5 5 5 1 3 2 10 0 0 2 11 0 0 3 5
4 12 5 4 4 4 11 1 5 1 7 0 0 1 7 1 2
5 9 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 11 1 7 6 10
6 13 5 2 2 4 11 2 10 1 7 0 0 2 14 2 3
7 12 5 5 5 1 3 0 0 1 7 1 5.6 0 0 4 7
8 4 1.6 1 1 1 3 0 0 0 0 1 5.6 0 0 1 2
9 3 1 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
10 15 6 2 2 2 6 1 5 2 14 3 17 0 0 5 8.5
11 126 50 48 52 20 55.5 11 55 7 50 5 28 6 43 29 49
12 7 3 2 2 1 3 1 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 5
100% 253 92 36 20 14 18 14 59
Did the effect vary with diagnostic group?
Table 1 shows that there were far more papers related to undifferentiated psychiatric
patients (diagnostic group 11) than to any specific diagnosis. The most common
explanation of the function of art in psychotherapy for undifferentiated patients and for
most other diagnoses was that the patient's work was thought to show 'signs' which
illustrated and provided access to the trauma site for the therapist. No explanation was
specific to a particular diagnostic group but there were indications that: signpost
explanations were more common for patients with traumatic stress, schizophrenia,
depression and non psychiatric patients; healing explanations were more common in
emotional disorders; and few papers offered explanations of effect for brain disease, brain
damage or for retardation.
So, we can conclude, according to the collected experience of these authors, the
function of art in therapy was not determined by diagnosis.
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