Page 77 - ART FORM AND MENTAL HEALTH - Ingrid Pénzes

Initial codes / Preliminary categories
Core con- cepts & theoretical framework
Initial Coding
Interviews
Figure 1. The research process
Participants
Focused Coding
Theoretical Coding
Theoretical categories
In total eight art therapists were purposely selected from the existing professional network of a research center of arts therapies in the Netherlands (http://www.kenvak.nl/en/). Participating art therapists were women with 15- >25 years experience with different populations and settings in adult mental health care. Based on the principle of theoretical sampling (Charmaz, 2014; Corbin & Strauss, 2008) they had different nationalities (Dutch, USA and UK), diverse training backgrounds and art therapy perspectives. This diversity provided a critical exploration and variation of the concepts investigated in this study. All art therapists gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
Data collection
Art products
The participating art therapists were asked to observe six art products of five clients with diverse mental health issues (see Table 4). Two art products (3 and 6) were made by one client. The art products were randomly selected from a larger sample of 138 products made by 48 clients of 11 art therapists. All clients gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All three paintings were made with acrylic paint on paper (size: 50 x 40 cm.) over a period of three weeks. For the first and second painting, the clients received standardized instructions to paint a landscape; for the third painting clients were asked to create a painting without instruction. For all paintings, clients received the same paint, color palette, brushes and
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