A dyadic art psychotherapy group for parents and infants – piloting quantitative methodologies for evaluation

Abstract

This paper describes a pilot of art psychotherapy groups using a dyadic approach as an intervention for parents and infants in order to improve their relationships. The pilot was developed as a collaboration between an Art Psychotherapist and a Developmental Psychologist. It sought to use standardised measures of parental well-being and object relations as well as developing an observational tool that could be applied to video footage of groups to measure change in the duration of attachment behaviors across the span of the intervention. The paper demonstrates a positive change within the dyads' relationships and the viability of evaluating groups using these measures. It will describe the process of developing the observational tool and argue for the next steps to be taken.

The evidence base for art therapy with parent and infant dyads: an integrative literature review

“…This practitioner-researcher stance has been a common feature of much art therapy research (McNiff, 1998) where there has also been a fluidity between research and evaluation as an integral part of practice. In two papers a second author from a research field brought a different perspective (Armstrong, Dalinkeviciute, & Ross, 2019;Arroyo & Fowler, 2013).…”

“…Within the non-directive approaches there are various degrees of structure to how the time is used -for example the model described by Meyerowitz-Katz (2017) has a structure moving from meals to art therapy to separate talking therapy whilst others describe more fluid use of the time (Armstrong & Howatson, 2015;Hall, 2008;Hosea, 2017). However the art making itself is left open to the dyads and they often described actively encouraging parents to follow the infants lead (Armstrong, Dalinkeviciute & Ross, 2019;Armstrong & Howatson, 2015;Arroyo & Fowler, 2013;Hall, 2008;Hosea, 2006Hosea, , 2011Lavey-Khan & Reddick, 2018). The exception in a UK context was the participative arts project (Black et al, 2015) where activities were determined by the workshops the artists delivered.…”

“…Meyerowitz-Katz (2017) described keeping the art works till the end of treatment, which is standard art therapy practice. All the other literature steered away from this convention, either returning work to go home right after the session (Proulx, 2003) or drying and caring for the art work to return the next week (Armstrong, Dalinkeviciute & Ross, 2019;Armstrong & Howatson, 2015;Arroyo & Fowler, 2013;Hall, 2008;Hosea, 2006Hosea, , 2017. This may reflect the needs of this specific population where infants need more immediacy and art work may no longer be meaningful to them after a delay.…”

“…Although no papers describe working on group processes directly, as you may in a traditional model of a psychotherapy group, Hosea (2017) describes how the group acted "as a community, with members acting like helpful neighbours or maybe aunties, uncles or cousins" and Armstrong and Howatson (2015) describe the 'sense of a support network'. Within this atmosphere of mutual support the papers describe the parents as gaining confidence in their abilities, in meeting new people, in their friendships and in their accessing of other services, in trying new activities and in learning from each other (Armstrong, Dalinkeviciute & Ross, 2019;Arroyo & Fowler, 2013;Black et al, 2015;Hall, 2008;Hosea, 2011;Lavey-Khan & Reddick, 2018).…”

A kaleidoscope of ways of using art therapy within child-based contexts

“…Additionally, I also was struck by some of the creative approaches used throughout these papers, such as the children's perspective being gained through them visually recording their hopes and thoughts through artistic quotes in McDonald et al (2019) paper; and by the mixed method design used in Armstrong et al (2019) paper. This really captures the importance of thinking creatively about different ways of optimising the way data is collected and shared, and around the power of gaining multiple perspectives and voices; such as from the children themselves, parents, teachers, therapists, and so forth.…”