Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of art therapy programme on the symptom levels of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. A 10 session art therapy program, each lasting 120 minutes, was applied to 10 male participants, aged between 29 to 65 and diagnosed with schizophrenia, for a total of 10 weeks. Follow up measurements were taken 12 weeks after the end of the study together with pre test and post test assessments Beck's Depression Inventory ( and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale ( were given to the patients participating in the art therapy programme at the beginning and at the end of ten weeks. One group pretest posttest control study design was used, and data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test. In the analyses, it was found that the art therapy programme was effective in reducing the depressive symptoms and positive and negative symptom levels of the participants, and this effect continued in the follow up measurement after 12 weeks. The results, limitations and strengths of the research were discussed in the light of the literature

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