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

Forward to International Journal of Art Therapy special issue; Art therapy with Children This special edition of the International Journal of Art Therapy is timely and important. In the current context, where mental health, social/relational, and emotional difficulties are prevalent, wide spread, and pervasive; it feels integral to highlight useful and effective ways of working with children, and their surrounding adults. This collection of papers places a spotlight on the usefulness and effectiveness of art therapy by qualified art therapists with children in a range of contexts, including within schools, those impacted by their refugee experience, those in medical settings, and those within ‘at risk’ parent–child dyads. It also opens an arena for considering what the existing evidence base currently is around the effectiveness of art therapy within different child-based populations (group and individual); whilst creating a platform for future research and discoveries in this area. This edition also presents an array of varied papers, each with a focus on contributing using mixed methods and specifically quantitative approaches to further add evidence to the usefulness, effectiveness, and applicability of art therapy with children. This is even more crucial, given that in the current literature base, often adults are foregrounded and more represented than children; therefore, this edition is widening the lens, and moving children to the centre. The first featured article titled, ‘The effectiveness and contribution of art therapy work with children in 2018 -what progress has been made so far? A systematic review’ by Cohen-Yatziv and Regev (2019) is a systematic literature review of the effectiveness of art therapy with children in a range of different contexts. After a wider scope review of the existing literature, the authors found 13 studies which met their inclusion criteria and, in the article, they summarise their findings from these studies; which are from a range of child-based contexts (e.g. Children who have been impacted by traumatic events, children who have a diagnosis of a specific medical condition, in this case asthma; children who have been described as ‘juvenile offenders’, children in the general population, and children with special educational needs and learning disabilities). This review aimed to detail the existing quantitative studies which have researched the effectiveness of art therapy with child populations which the authors deemed had used adequately robust methodologies. The authors discuss some of the complexities and limitations of existing studies including: small sample sizes, lack of a control group, lack of randomisation, measures being used which were not standardised, normed, or validated; a lack of existing quantitative studies, some studies having limited information detailed such as the length of the intervention, the gender of the participants, the diagnosis/presenting difficulties, and the qualifications of the person/ people undergoing the intervention. The authors advocate that there are some positive findings and indications of the effectiveness of art therapy with children in a range of contexts which is promising; and which echo lots of the existing positive findings within the qualitative literature base around the use of art therapy with children. However, also advocate that more planned, robust, and systematic research on a larger scale, ideally with control groups and randomisation, are needed in this area. In the second featured article, ‘A dyadic art psychotherapy group for parents and infants – piloting quantitative methodologies for evaluation’ written by Victoria Gray Armstrong, Egle Dalinkeviciute, and Josephine Ross (2019), the authors describe a pilot of an art psychotherapy 12-week group (1.5-hour duration each week) using a dyadic approach for 10 mothers and their infants described as ‘at risk’ using a broad inclusion criteria ranging from parenting capacity difficulties through to postnatal depression through to bereavement, with the aim of improving the parent–child relationship. This intervention was a collaboration between a qualified art psychotherapist and a Developmental Psychologist; and drew on principles from both disciplines, as well as having a focus on theories, such as, mentalisation and attachment. This pilot was measured using a range of standardised measures which focused on parental wellbeing and object relations theory; as well as an observational tool which the authors developed themselves. This observational tool was used when analysing video footage of the group intervention (at