Page 85 - ART FORM AND MENTAL HEALTH - Ingrid Pénzes

Also, clear high or low structured art products demonstrated less variation. Variation emerged as a core concept by clustering categories related to the diversity within the art product (see Table 1). Variation existed when a range of formal elements was present or when there was diversity within one or more formal elements (e.g. diversity in movement by the presence of short and long, bended and straight lines). All therapists mentioned the amount of variation in each art product explicitly.
Therapist 8: About art product 1: “There is little variation; no mixing of colors, not playing with them, out of the bottle and more over he keeps them very separate. Lines are repetitive, no fluidity, absolutely boxed-off, rigid distinctions, no overlapping, juncture position of colors.”
Mental health
Anyone who expects that art therapists in these interviews used diagnostic terms such as depression and anxiety disorder in order to describe mental health will be disappointed. Art therapists were exceptionally reserved in using these terms and did not explicitly relate art products to psychopathology. However, art therapists did consider the art product as an important basis for clients’ mental state and consequently the possibilities and focus for treatment. Clients’ possibilities were mentioned more explicitly than their mental problems.
Clients’ mental state: balance
The art products provided cues to the art therapists about the clients’ inner world. They seemed to use an implicit conceptual model about the client’s balance. To describe this, they used a variety of terms. Most of them were related to “feeling” or “thought” (see Table 2).
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