81 THE THERAPEUTIC EFFECT OF MANDALA PAINTING THERAPY INTERVENTION ON COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT IN PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS OF VOCAL EDUCATION STUDENTS
Authors: Li Jizhen 
Published: February 2025

Abstract

Background
Vocal education students often face dual academic and artistic pressures, leading to frequent mental illnesses and subsequently causing psychological and neurological problems such as cognitive impairment. The decline in cognitive function during long-term drug treatment or disease progression seriously affects the learning ability and artistic expression of vocal education students and patients. In recent years, psychotherapy methods have gradually been applied to the rehabilitation process of psychiatric patients, among which mandala painting therapy, as an art therapy, has gradually been introduced into the field of psychotherapy. Related studies have shown that mandala painting can help improve the emotional state of psychiatric patients, enhance attention, memory, and other cognitive functions. The study aims to explore the therapeutic effect of mandala painting therapy on cognitive impairment in psychiatric patients among vocal education students.

Methods
The study selected 58 vocal education students as experimental subjects, all of whom were diagnosed with mental illness and exhibited varying degrees of cognitive impairment. All participants signed informed consent forms and voluntarily participated in this study. All patients were randomly divided into an intervention group and a control group, with 29 students in each group. Both groups received general psychiatric medication treatment and routine care. The intervention group received additional Mandala painting intervention therapy on this basis, twice a week for one hour each time. The intervention duration is 12 weeks. The efficacy of the two groups of patients was evaluated before and after intervention using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA).

Results
After intervention, the total PANSS score of the experimental group decreased from 83.15 ± 3.36 points to 54.28 ± 2.16 points, and the total MoCA score increased from 19.38 ± 2.85 points to 25.14 ± 2.95 points. There were statistically significant differences (P&lt;0.05) in the scores of the experimental group before and after intervention. The total PANSS score of the control group before intervention was 83.27 ± 3.48 points, and the total MoCA score was 19.48 ± 2.46 points. After intervention, the overall PANSS score decreased to 78.52 ± 6.88 points, and the overall MoCA score increased to 20.25 ± 3.68 points. The PANSS total score before and after the experiment showed statistical differences (P&lt;0.05), but the improvement effect of MoCA total score was not significant enough (P&gt;0.05). Furthermore, in the inter group comparison, there was a statistically significant difference (P&lt;0.05) between the PANSS total score and the MoCA total score after intervention.

Discussion
The results indicate that compared with conventional treatment methods, vocal education students with mental illness can effectively alleviate cognitive impairment after receiving Mandala painting therapy intervention treatment. Mandala painting therapy can effectively enhance the cognitive function of psychiatric patients, alleviate positive and negative symptoms, and improve their self-awareness and emotional regulation ability through artistic expression. Future research can further explore the differences in therapeutic effects of mandala painting therapy on different types of psychiatric patients, providing more reliable treatment methods for clinical treatment.