The purpose of this study is to develop a prenatal program of expressive arts to help pregnant women and to test the effect of the program on the resting of emotion, the improving of attachments towards fetuses, and the motherhood identification.
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The purpose of this study is to develop a prenatal program of expressive arts to help pregnant women and to test the effect of the program on the resting of emotion, the improving of attachments towards fetuses, and the motherhood identification.
The problems of this study were; firstly, what was the developmental procedure and the components of the prenatal program for the expressive arts therapy; and secondly, what was the psychological changes(the resting of emotion, the improving of attachments towards fetuses, and the motherhood identification) of pregnant women when we compared the experimental group with the controlled group by using the developed prenatal program.
The developmental procedure of the prenatal program was the three stages of the review on the related literature with the basic theory on a prenatal program and the expressive arts therapy, of the feasibility study on the activities, and of the completion of the program.
In this study to develop a prenatal program, first of all, the related literatures with the basic theory on the prenatal program and the expressive arts therapy were reviewed. The major theories referred to the developing a prenatal program of the expressive arts included the followings: psycho-sociological development tasks for the prenatal education by Lederman(1984), the object relation theory by Winnicott(1980), the interaction model between mother and infant by Barnard(2003), the 12 senses organ theory by Steiner(1909), the experiential theory on delivery by Grope (1988), the three levels of awareness theory by Halprin(2003), and finally 5 stages of the expressive arts therapy.
In addition, for the resting of emotion and the wholistic development for both pregnant women and fetus the followings which were lacked in the previous studies were newly included; for the emotional level of awareness a living meditation, a natural prenatal training, various prenatal musics, a fatherhood prenatal training, and the likes; for the physical level of awareness prenatal talks, prenatal actions, prenatal plays, massage for reducing the delivery pains, and the likes; for the cognitional levels of awareness the importance of prenatal training, theories with each subject, the importance of delivery situation, the psychology of newly born baby, and the likes; for the development of five senses a tea meditation, a food art, and the likes.
Two groups of pregnant women for this study were selected as the experimental group of 4 and the controlled group of 5 from J hospital in The Seoul Metropolitan City, The Republic of Korea. The experimental period for this study was 10 weeks from July 31 to September 30 in 2009. The number of practices for this expressive art program was 10 of each with 120 minutes long. The instruments for evaluating both pre/post experiments included the followings: the questionnaire for the resting examination, the questionnaire for the attachment towards fetuses , the questionnaire for motherhood identification, the questionnaire for the session performance, the questionnaire for participants' impressions right after the completion of the program, the questionnaire for the supporter's evaluation, and finally the questionnaire for the review on five stages of the expressive arts therapy by the specialists.
To test the effect of the developed program on the psychological changes of pregnant women both of pre/post surveys for the experimental and controlled groups were conducted. To analyze the collected data both of the quantitative and qualitative analysis were done statistically and/or descriptively.
The major conclusions in this study could be summarized as follows:
Firstly, through the three stages of the developing the program the result of the feasibility study on the activities was shown to be appropriate. Among the activities with above 5.0 on the average 10 of subjects and purposes, and 28 of activities were finally selected based on the related theories, the experienced standard by the researcher, and medium materials and required time with the subjects.
Secondly, it was founded that the emotional rest, attachments towards fetuses, and the motherhood identification for pregnant women in the experimental group had been improved as compared with the controlled group by practicing the developed prenatal program of expressive arts, and their statistical confidence levels were highly significant.
Thirdly, in the results of qualitative analysis for the participants' subjective experience the average of individually evaluating points in the participants' performance on all of 10 sessions were generally high. The evaluation on the satisfaction and the preference of 4 pregnant women by the questionnaire for participants' impressions was also high.
Fourthly, as the analytical results by five stages of the expressive arts therapy for participants' responded data on activities all of 4 pregnant women under study were shown to be reached to the stages of both change and growth in an understanding for themselves, improving the interaction between pregnant woman and fetus, a new recognition and self confidence for motherhood roles, reducing the delivery unrest, a pledge for a harmonic relationship among family members, and the likes. In addition to this the supporter's evaluation on the program as a whole was shown to be a high record and positive.