Examining the Effect of Art Therapy on Reducing Emotion Regulation Difficulties: Therapy or Education?

Abstract

It can be said that the main goal of psychotherapy approaches is to change dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors. The therapeutic effectiveness of psychotherapy methods that lead to change, in other words, the establishment of a causal relationship between the change in the target behavior, symptom or disorder and the intervention is examined through effectiveness studies. Emotion regulation processes play an important role in the development of many psychopathologies. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of the art therapy program on reducing the emotion regulation difficulties of individuals and to compare it with the effect of the same practices on reducing the emotion regulation difficulties of individuals participating in art therapy training, which is carried out in an experiential way. In the study, art therapy program was applied to the first experimental group and art therapy training was applied to the second experimental group. Psychology undergraduate and psychology graduate students participated in the study. Individuals who scored high on the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and volunteered were assigned to the first experimental group (11) and the second experimental group (11) by random sampling method. The program was applied to both experimental groups once a week for a total of ten sessions, each session lasting 180 minutes. The same program developed by the program coordinator was applied to both groups. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used to compare the groups within each other. As a result, it was found that the emotion regulation difficulties of the individuals who participated in the art therapy program decreased, and the difference between the mean pre-test and post-test scores of the individuals who participated in the art therapy training program was not significant at the .05 level. From this point of view, treatment motivation is an important issue for art therapy as in other treatment methods. It can be stated that being ready for change and taking steps towards recovery is an important factor in emotion regulation.