Painting together: A parent-child dyadic art therapy group

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

“…We have extracted the results (table 2). Where no statistical analysis was included but data were given (Black et al, 2015;Lavey-Khan & Reddick, 2018) we have run our own analysis. Improvements on measures of parent's depression and wellbeing were observed across a variety of instruments (Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS, Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995), Edinburgh postnatal depression scale (Cox, Holden and Sagovsky, 1987), Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS, 2006, NHS Health Scotland, Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ, Kroenke, 2014, Generalised Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD-7, Kroenke, 2014) and Parenting Stress Index (PSI, Abidin, 2012) and demonstrated to be moderate to large, and significant in N = 3 studies.…”

“…In terms of population some were focused on specific referral criteria, such as post-natal depression, while others were broadly looking to improve relationships. The majority focused on under 3s but a couple had a narrower age range (Parashak, 2008;Proulx L, 2000) and four included children under the age of 5 in their criteria, although describing work in the younger age range in their cases (Arroyo & Fowler, 2013;Lavey-Khan & Reddick, 2018;Meyerowitz-Katz, 2017;Proulx L, 2003).…”

“…Co-facilitators were generally experienced with young children and families and psychological understanding, rather than having an art background. Lavey- Khan & Reddick (2018) highlight the benefits of different perspectives in the cofacilitators and the opportunities for shared learning. Papers stressed the importance of clinical supervision for the facilitating team.…”

“…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.…”

“…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).…”