Primary-school-based art therapy: a review of controlled studies

Abstract

, SRA'sT (Art), MRes Clinical Research, has worked as an art therapist with children, young people and families since 2005. She now also enjoys supervising, teaching and researching art therapy. Alex is currently social media officer and tutor at the British Association of Art Therapists.

Investigating the effectiveness of school health services delivered by a health provider: a systematic review of systematic reviews

“…Figure 1 used meta-analysis to combine results [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], whereas the remaining nine SRs narratively 182 synthesized results [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Eleven SRs included studies located in countries with high-183 income or upper-middle income economies only [19,20,[23][24][25][29][30][31][32][33]37,38,39]. Six SRs 184 included at least one study from countries with lower-middle income or lower income 185 economies [18,21,22,28,35,36].…”

“…187 To be included in this overview, at least 50% of studies within each SR had to fulfill 188 all inclusion criteria. In four SRs, 100% of included studies fulfilled all inclusion criteria 189 [18,27,29,33], although Brendel and colleagues [29] only included one study in total. In 190 another four SRs, 75% to 99% of included studies fulfilled all the inclusion criteria 191 [21,26,30,37].…”

“…In the remaining twelve SRs, 50% to 74% of included studies fulfilled all the 192 inclusion criteria [19,20,[22][23][24][25]28,31,32,[34][35][36]. 193 All SRs primarily examined studies on school-based, rather than school-linked [19,23,24,28,29,[32][33][34]36], four on oral health [18,25,27,30], two on asthma [31,37], and one 196 SR each on sleep [20]; obesity [26]; vision [21]; menstrual management [22]; and sexual and 197 reproductive health (SRH) [35]. Eleven SRs included only cluster-and individually-9 198 randomized controlled trials [19][20][21]24,27,28,30,32,34,37], seven SRs included other types of 199 controlled and uncontrolled experimental studies in addition to RCTs [22,25,…”

“…The effectiveness of school-based mental health services was assessed in nine SRs (Table 3c) [19,23,24,28,29,[32][33][34]36,39]. SRs addressed various intervention types: universal interventions [19,24,28,32,34,39]; targeted interventions for military-connected children [29], children and adolescents at risk for depression and/or anxiety [28,34], refugee and war-traumatized youth [36], and children referred to therapy [33]; and indicated interventions for children and/or adolescents diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder [23], depression [24,28,39], or anxiety [24,34,39].…”

“…Review quality was assessed 32 using a modified Ballard and Montgomery four-item checklist. 1654 references were 33 screened and 20 systematic reviews containing 270 primary studies were assessed 34 narratively. Interventions with evidence for effectiveness addressed autism, depression, 35 anxiety, obesity, dental caries, visual acuity, asthma, and sleep.…”