Fostering Resiliency in School Aged Children Through Art Therapy Group Interventions
Graduation Date
Spring 2013
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy
Degree Granting Institution
Notre Dame de Namur University
Program Name
Art Therapy
Dean
John Lemmon, PhD
First Reader
Richard Carolan, EdD, ATR-BC
Second Reader
Carolee Stabno, PsyD, MFT
Abstract
This study examined the usefulness of art therapy to build resiliency in children who had experienced trauma by boosting their self-esteem and reducing stress levels It was hypothesized that the use of an art therapy group for children will increase self esteem and reduce stress resulting in a greater resiliency. The population used for this study consisted of eight-school aged children a, a local elementary school in the Bay Area. An art therapy based group was implemented over five sessions. Qualitative analysis of the artwork created during the sessions revealed several themes that illustrate the usefulness of the art to provide a creative outlet for participants. Due to the small the sample size, the results of the qualitative analysis of the resiliency, self esteem and stress scores lacked measures of validity required to have a high level of confidence in the results, or to generalize the results to other populations.