Drawing the Future: Psychosocial Correlates of Palestinian Children’s Drawings

Abstract

The present study examined the relationship between Palestinian children’s drawings of their imagined futures and parental reports of their psychosocial environments. As part of a larger program evaluation project, 51 Palestinian schoolchildren and adolescents (25 females and 26 males; age range: 6–14 years) living in 4 districts in the West Bank participated in drawing sessions in which they drew pictures of their mustakbel, or future. Parents of participating children provided ratings of each child on aspects of their lives at home, in school, and in the community. After the sessions, psychosocial workers (“facilitators”) rated the content and style of the drawings. Results revealed a series of significant relationships between characteristics of the children’s drawings and the parental reports. Facilitators’ ratings of the violent content and distress levels in the drawings were negatively correlated with parental reports of exposure to violent events. In addition, facilitators rated drawings that they saw as high in violent content to be indicative of higher levels of distress in the children who produced them. Results are discussed in terms of the need for future research on professional interpretations of children’s drawings and symbolic expressions of violence in zones of ongoing conflict.

A qualitative synthesis of drawing‐based research on the illness‐related experiences of children living with physical health problems

“…Second , the selected studies mostly focused on the individual functioning and social relationships of children living with physical health problems. In fact, children's drawings can provide a chance to reveal how they relate to the environmental or sociocultural contexts (Kamens et al, 2016). Future research should place more trust on children's capacity in research and explore more in‐depth information about their illness‐related experiences from a broader view, which can help to better understand children's needs in the social welfare system.…”