The Effectiveness of Expressive Art Group Therapy on Internalized Problems and Emotional-Functional Profile of Parentless and Poor-parenting Children

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of expressive art group therapy on internalized problems and emotional-functional profiles of parentless and poor-parenting children. The design of this research was quasi-experimental, pre-test, and post-test with the control and sham-control group. The study's statistical population consisted of all parentless and poor-parenting boys from three to five years old living in one of the centers of Golestan Ali Family-like Center in Mashhad city. Thirty boys selected by the convenience sampling method were randomly divided into the intervention group, the sham control group, and the control group. The experimental group received expressive art group therapy during eleven 90-minute sessions, while the sham-control group participated in eleven 90-minute computer training sessions. The control group didn’t receive any intervention. Multivariate covariance analysis was used for data analysis. The instruments of this study were Greenspan emotional-functional profile questionnaire and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). The results of MANCOVA on pre and post-test scores showed that there is a significant difference between variables of emotional-functional profile (P< 0.05) and internalized problems (P< 0.05). Thus, the mean of functional-emotional profile scores in the experimental group after receiving intervention increased significantly compared to the control group. The scores of internalized problems significantly decreased compared to the control group. Besides, the improvement in the scores of functional-emotional profile and internalized problems in the experimental group were more than the sham control group. According to the results, and expressive art group therapy model can be considered as an adequate intervention for improving the internalized problems and emotional-functional profile of children.