Abstract:
Objective: This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of painting therapy in reducing emotional- behavioral problems (internalized problems: anxious - depressed, withdrawn-depressed, somatic complaints, and externalized problems: aggressive behavior and rule-breaking behavior) of Children with cancer. Method: The research design was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest and control group with follow-up. Using targeted sampling, 40children (6 to 12-year-old) with cancer, whose score on the Child Behavior Check List (CBCL) was one standard deviation above average, was selected and randomly divided into two groups of experiment (n = 20) and control (n = 20), but due to the drop in the number of subjects, it decreased to 31 (16 experimental group and 15 control group). The painting program was performed on the experimental group in the form of 8 two-hour sessions. To analyze the data, the mixed variance analysis method was used. Results: The results showed that although the overall score of the internalized and externalized problems was significantly reduced, painting therapy didn’t affect the somatic complaints (of internalized problems) and the rule-breaking behavior (of externalized problems). Conclusions: The results showed that painting therapy can be an effective way to reduce the emotional-behavioral problems of children with cancer. Therefore the findings of this study can have preventive clinical applications.
Machine summary:
The results showed that painting therapy can be an effective way to reduce the emotional-behavioral problems of children with cancer.
Emotional-Behavioral Problems, Externalized Problems, Internalized Problems, Painting Therapy Introduction Cancer is a bitter reality and causes stress in the lives of millions of people (Nash, Day, Hiratsuka, Zimpelman, & Koller, 2019).
Also, since childhood cancers are considered life-threatening diseases (Logan, Perz, Ussher, Peate, & Anazodo, 2019; Mehdipour, Rafiepoor, & Haji Alizadeh, 2019), stress is one of the common consequences after diagnosing cancer in children (Puhr et al, 2019).
Depending on the complications of the disease and the type of treatment the child receives, as well as being away from peers, there may be physical, cognitive, and emotional problems for the child with cancer (Zarani, Panaghi, Mirzaei, & Helmi, 2019, Shafiee, Shariatmadar, & Farahbakhsh, 2019).
Since anger and aggression are among the complications of chronic diseases, including cancer in the children (Granek, Ben-David, Bar-Sela, Shapira, & Ariad, 2019), and the evidence confirms the experience of depression and anxiety in these children, the findings lead the researcher to the point that various emotional-behavioral problems in these children will be important and must be studied and cured.
Despite the numerous methods used to treat the psychological problems of cancer patients, according to the researcher knowledge, despite its importance in art therapy and its effectiveness on a variety of variables and its ease of application in internal research, the number of studies about painting therapy was very few.
Discussion and Conclusion This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of painting therapy on reducing emotional-behavioral problems in children with cancer.