Drawing and Painting

 

Drawing and Painting for Stress Relief

Art therapy has been widely practiced for many, many years, both formally in a therapeutic context, and informally among those who simply feel better when they draw. Decades ago, psychologist Carl Jung recommended coloring mandalas (circular designs that can contain intricate patterns or symbols) as a therapeutic intervention to promote psychological health, as he perceived that drawing mandalas had a calming effect on his patients while facilitating their processing of thoughts and emotions. Since then, art therapists have long recommended this practice and have reported positive results, though these results were not demonstrated by research until later. While there is still room for many more studies on mandalas and drawing, in general, several studies have already shown us some important information about the effectiveness of using art for stress relief.

One study from researchers Chloe Bell and Steven Robbins randomly assigned 50 adults ages 30 and under to either create artwork or sort a series of art prints. Before either group was asked to do anything related to art, they were asked to engage in the mild stressor of creating a 10-item to-do list of their “most pressing concerns and worries,” which was designed to create a mildly negative mood and mild anxiety that the activities could then potentially minimize. Then, they were given assessments of their moods and anxiety levels. Finally, one group was provided paper, colored pencils, charcoal pencils, and oil pastels, as well as 20 minutes to create art. The second group was given a stack of 60 art prints and the instructions to sort them “based on their pictorial content” for the next 20 minutes. Both of these activities would expose the subjects to art, but only the first group was involved in the creative expression.

After three measures of negative mood and anxiety were collected before and after each intervention, the results showed that the group who created artwork experienced significantly greater reductions in negative mood and anxiety compared with the art-sorting group, showing that the mere act of creating art can significantly minimize negative mood and anxiety, some of the negative effects of stress.