This research aims to study the meaning, experiences, and changes caused by art therapy intended for the resilience of abused child. Child abuse is a rising concern in our society, and in line with the purposes, this research applied a qualitative cas...
This research aims to study the meaning, experiences, and changes caused by art therapy intended for the resilience of abused child. Child abuse is a rising concern in our society, and in line with the purposes, this research applied a qualitative case study to investigate the meaning of art therapy for the resilience of abused child. The participant of this research is a 10-year-old boy under case management for child abuse by A child protection institution.
The cases under the study had 13 sessions from March 29, 2022, to May 23, 2022. The sessions took place in the art clinic room of S child protection institution for 50 minutes twice a week. The goals of art therapy for the resilience of abused child were to control emotions by exploring and expressing negative emotions that are caused by abused experiences and to maintain an amicable relationship with others by understanding and sympathizing with the mind and emotions of others. Furthermore, the sessions drove the participant to hope for a brighter future by establishing a positive self-image. The art therapy sessions were planned to achieve the goals mentioned above. The materials collected include minutes of consultation attended by the social worker of the children protection institution, the mother of the participant, and the participant prior to the sessions, a summary of the participant's all art therapy sessions, an observation journal on the linguistic and non-linguistic expressions recorded by the researcher in each session, and artworks used during each art therapy session. The constant comparative analysis developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967), which is commonly used for qualitative case analysis, was applied to analyze the experience and meaning of art therapy on abused child from the materials. The researcher repeatedly read and analyzed all collected materials and coded them using open coding. Categorization to higher category took place through constant comparison to analyze the art therapy experience of abused child and its meanings.
The result of material collection and analysis yielded 6 higher topics and 13 lower topics. The yielded higher topics are <Experienced comfort from boring life and complexity of art>, <Showing my emotion is difficult and I feel nervous>, <I expressed my emotion during the art therapy and released suppressed feelings>, <I found my positive sides and got around to look around my surroundings>, <Art is a space where I am wholly accepted and supported>, and <It gave me hopes for the new family and my future>.
Based on the research, the following conclusions were drawn from the experiences and the meanings of art therapy intended for the resilience of abused child.
First, the participant enhanced his self-control ability by expressing and controlling suppressed feelings through visualizing emotions using art therapy. The participant expressed a complex and complicated emotions felt in his daily life through art therapy. The therapy allowed him to recognize the emotion suppressed within himself and helped him express and healthily control the emotions.
Second, the participant explored the social support system and reconstructed the relationship within his family through art therapy. In this way, he was able to expand his social relationship skills. During the art therapy session, the participant formed a trustable relationship with the researcher, reconstructed the meaning of a healthy relationship, was comforted by the trust shown by the researcher, recognized the external support system, including that of his family, and experienced the healthy socialization process.
Third, the participant, a victim of child abuse, was separated from his mother, the perpetrator of child abuse. This way, he was freed from ambivalence and formed a positive self-image. Moreover, he was inspired to have expectations of the new environment and hope for a healthy and hopeful future.
Overall, art therapy for the resilience of abused child releases the feelings suppressed in abused children due to trauma and enhances self-control ability by controlling such feelings. In addition, the participant expanded interpersonal competency by recognizing external resources through experiencing support from the researcher during the art therapy session and reconstructing the family's social support system and relationship.
Furthermore, the participant was able to form a positive self-image by viewing himself as a valuable person, as he was separated from the ambivalence he had from the child abuse perpetrator, his mother. In this way, the abused child was freed from negative emotions from his mother's child abuse case and gained the strength to hope for a brighter future that he will have with his family from the positive internal and external support systems.