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Art Therapy
The results of the study showed that the mothers who were involved in art therapy intervention group got significant decreases in the levels of stress-related to parenting, they had a decreased level of depression as well as the perceived stress after they participated in the art therapy intervention group as compared to those mothers who were in the control group. The weekly presession ratings also showed there was a trend for improvement of parents’ mood from an average score of about 5.5 in the first three sessions to an average of about 6.5 in the last three meetings (Lee, Sau-Lai, and Maria). The art therapy enabled the mothers who were involved in considering their children first and putting the needs and interest of the children first. This means that the therapy helped to change the attitude of the mothers to their children.
Based on the mothers’ comments in the interviews the art therapy activities had brought them closer to the inner world of their children and had also made them aware of both the challenges their children were facing and their children’s emotional reactions to these challenges. In the parent-child relationship, problems behaviors of children, parenting practice as well as parenting stress only a few changes were seen in the results of the measures of all the four variables in both the control and experimental group. The Change Interviews also contained no data related to changes in these four variables. However, the weekly presession ratings showed there was a gradual reduction in parenting stress and an improvement in the parent-child relationship, parenting practice, and behavioral problems across the weeks (the scores for parenting stress were reversed so that a higher score indicated less stress).
The discrepancy between the findings from the pre- and post-measures for these variables and the weekly ratings could be because the former assessed the mothers’ judgments of more specific behaviors. In contrast, the latter focused more on the mothers’ overall impressions (“Overall, in the past week, how was your relationship with your child?”). The interviews were efficient, and they helped to support the statement that art therapy groups were effective in helping mothers of children with SEN improve their emotional well-being and their capability to understand their child’s perspective.
Works Cited
Lee, Sau-Lai, and Maria Sau-Chi Peng. “The effects of group art therapy on mothers of children with special educational needs.” Art Therapy 34.1 (2017): 12-19. doi:10.1080/07421656.2016.1273697