Stressed at school? Art therapy reduces teenage girls' headaches
July 30, 2019
Science Daily/University of Washington
In a pilot study, researchers explored art-based mindfulness activities that schools could use to reduce headaches, a common side effect of stress in adolescent girls. After three weeks of twice-weekly mindfulness and art therapy sessions, 8 teenage girls reported experiencing significantly fewer headaches.
Teenagers report higher levels of stress than adults, and cite school as the highest contributing factor, according to the American Psychological Association's annual report. A summary from 2013 concluded that while stress among Americans was not new, "what's troubling is the stress outlook for teens in the United States."
In response, recently some schools have turned to mindfulness-based programs as a way to alleviate stress among their students. These programs could benefit from more research into what activities students find most useful.
In a pilot study led by the University of Washington, researchers explored art-based mindfulness activities that schools could use to reduce headaches, a common side effect of stress in adolescent girls. The test group of eight teenage girls gave feedback on which activities they preferred.
After three weeks of twice-weekly mindfulness and art therapy sessions, the girls reported experiencing significantly fewer headaches. At the beginning of the study, the girls reported 7.38 headaches, on average, within the previous two-week period. At the end of the study, that number had dropped to 4.63 -- almost a 40% decrease. This drop remained even seven weeks after the study had ended. The researchers published their findings May 22 in the journal Art Therapy.
"This study highlights one of my main research missions: We should be making interventions in cooperation with teenagers if we want these strategies to work," said corresponding author Elin Björling, a senior research scientist in the UW's human centered design and engineering department. "There's something powerful about saying 'I'm inviting you to start thinking about how you could get better. Come have a conversation with me about how we could do this.' I think that's why we saw such a strong response even in this tiny study."
The team recruited eight girls between the ages of 14 to 17 from a high school in Seattle. All of the participants reported experiencing three or more headaches not related to an injury within a two-week period, and five of the eight mentioned tension or stress as the main reason for headaches.
During the program, the students met twice a week for a 50-minute session with the research team. Each session began with an activity in which students would map where they were feeling stressed on a drawing of a body. Then the teens would participate in mindfulness and art activities before closing the session with another body map.
"After the study, we looked at all the before and after body maps side by side. It was so clear that something significant was going on," Björling said. "In the beginning everything was in pieces, and in the end everything was flowing through the whole body."
The teens tried different mindfulness techniques in each session so they could find which ones worked the best for them.
What teens liked: square breathing, a technique that encourages people to take slow breaths by concentrating and counting.
"I thought: 'No teen ever wants to do counted breathing, and they're never going to do it,'" Björling said. "But a few of them said 'That's my favorite. I do it all the time now.'"
What teens didn't like: mindful eating, a technique that asks people to focus on what and how they're eating.
"They hated it," Björling said. "This was a technique straight out of a lot of mindfulness programs for teens, but it didn't connect with them. It just annoyed them. It goes to show I need them to be experts in their own lives."
The researchers also asked the students to participate in different mindful art activities. During each session, the students tried a new art medium -- they particularly liked using oil pastels -- and different types of art therapy projects, including one where they worked together to create mandalas before and after a meditation exercise.
While the teens experienced fewer headaches after the study ended, their overall stress levels didn't change much. But the students reported feeling better in the moment, saying that they felt like they could handle whatever happened for the rest of the day.
The team was surprised to see any differences, given the small size of the group.
"It's not just about this study," Björling said. "This problem of teen mental health and headaches is so big that I'm worried about what happens if we don't take it on. Somistine Stevens, a nursing professor at UW Tacoma, and Narayan Singh, a psychology doctoral student at Seattle Pacific University, are also co-authors on this paper.e teens will want nothing to do with art mindfulness. So we need to come at this in lots of different ways. We're going to need an army of people and a cornucopia of options."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190730092626.htm
Clear effect of art therapy on severe depression
November 6, 2017
Science Daily/University of Gothenburg
Create a picture of how you are feeling on this particular day, said the first exercise in the art therapy. After ten treatments the patients who suffered from severe or moderately severe depression had shown more improvement than the patients in the control group, shows research.
"The conclusion is that it was the art therapy that facilitated their improvement," says Christina Blomdahl, PhD at the institute of health and care sciences, licensed occupational therapist and art therapist.
As part of her dissertation she has allowed 43 patients with severe or moderately severe depression to undergo a manual-based art therapy that she has developed herself. The control group consisted of 36 people who all suffered from the same medical condition.
In parallel with this, all participants were given different combinations of medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy and physical therapy. The majority of the participants were so affected by their depression that they were unable to work.
The individual art therapy took place in psychiatry or primary care and was conducted by a specially trained therapist. Each session began with a short briefing and a relaxation exercise. After that it was crayons, water colors and creation that was on the agenda, all based on a predetermined setup.
"They followed the manual I had created in order to ensure that it was scientific, but although everyone was given the same theme to go on the patients responded very differently to the exercises. The materials were simple, allowing people to doodle and feel free to express themselves the way they wanted to, and then they would talk about the picture and its significance to the participant," explains Christina Blomdahl.
After ten hour-long treatment sessions the patients had improved on an average of almost five steps on a rating scale used for depression. A large leap that entails a considerable change to everyday life, and sometimes it may also mean that a patient is able to return to work.
Anxiety, sleep, ability to take initiative and emotional involvement are some of the factors that are assessed. In the control group that had not undergone art therapy there was no definite change.
"The focal point was that people felt like they were meeting themselves; that the picture served as a mirror where you could see and make new discoveries about yourself, a bit like coming to life, says Christina Blomdahl.
"Even the people who did not experience any direct benefit from the treatment had shown improvement. Painting pictures based on themes and discussing the pictures with the therapist promotes self-reflection and brain stimulation that takes place outside of the conscious mind," she continues.
"It is my hope that art therapy will be used in healthcare again. Based on evidence requirements it has been more or less scrapped by psychiatry, but this is one of the largest studies that has been conducted in this area and it is a step that may lead to more people being trained in it and the method being used again," Christina Blomdahl concludes.
Further information: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/52419
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171106100128.htm