The Impact of Art Therapy Program and Interaction Group Application on Psychological Symptom Levels

This research aims to analyze the effect of art therapy program on individuals’ psychological symptom levels. The study incorporates experimental research based on pretest-posttest design. Individuals that scored high on Brief Symptom Inventory and individuals volunteered to participate in the study were allocated to first (11) and second experimental group (11) in an objective matter. Measuring tools were applied as pretest before the application and as posttest after the application. During the study, the first experimental group was subjected to eight sessions of art therapy, while the second experimental group, which is the encounter group, was subjected to eight sessions of a program consisting of topics selected by group members. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used for the comparisons within each group while Mann Whitney U Test was used to determine the differentiating groups. In conclusion, when first experimental group and second experimental group were compared, individuals that received art therapy experienced lower levels of somatisation, obsessive-compulsive disorder, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, anger and phobic anxiety based on Brief Symptom Inventory subscales, while art therapy did not have any effect on reducing the paranoid ideation and psychoticism. However, the difference between pretest and posttest results of the encounter group was less than .05, which was determined as insignificant. When the results of art therapy group and encounter group were compared, only depression and anger was determined to be significant, while other subscales were determined as insignificant