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

No. 1
judges 2
3
4
60
No. 2
Study 3
groups 4
35 69
9 18
4 8
2 4
1 2
32 63
15 29
4 8
13 62
3 14
3 14
1 5
1 5
13 62
6 29
2 10
92
8 67
2 17
1 8
1 8
0 0
6 50
5 42
1 8
10 71
4 29
0 0
0 0
0 0
10 71
3 21
1 7
Age and sex: Few studies gave much demographic information. Many studies simply
described the group as 'adult', but the majority described only the group ranges or the
mean age even when they were considerably wide. The sex distribution was often only
described as 'mixed' so could have been considerably uneven and sometimes group
numbers were missing, especially of diagnostic categories.
Controls: 72% of studies used non-psychiatric controls, and gave little information on
age, sex, origin, screening procedure and numbers. Where descriptions of controls were
given, they were always hospital staff. Mostly, there was no indication that control
pictures were done under the same conditions, or even the same number of pictures!
(One study used an average of up to 99 pictures from therapy sessions for patients,
against one picture painted in a non psychiatric outside art group 158 ).
Matching: Chapter one makes the point that IQ is difficult to match for psychiatric
patients, since tests may not be sympathetic to psychiatric disturbance, but the majority
of studies failed to match for age, sex and mostly even group numbers.
158
C. Bergman and M. Gonzalez (1993), Art and Madness: can the interface be quantified? Am. J. Art
Therapy , V.31:81-90 on development of the SPAR scale.