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Healing by Creating: Patient Evaluations of Art‐Making Program
Author(s) -
Heiney Sue P.,
DarrHope Heidi,
Meriwether Marian P.,
Adams Swann Arp
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the journal of creative behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.896
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2162-6057
pISSN - 0022-0175
DOI - 10.1002/jocb.84
Subject(s) - the arts , relevance (law) , art therapy , conceptual framework , psychology , health care , medicine , value (mathematics) , medical education , psychotherapist , nursing , computer science , sociology , art , visual arts , social science , machine learning , political science , law , economics , economic growth
The benefits of using art in health care, especially with cancer patients, have been described anecdotally. However, few manuscripts include a conceptual framework to describe the evaluation of patient programs. This paper describes patients' evaluation of a healing arts program developed within a hospital for cancer patients that used art‐making, story, and therapeutic group processes to enhance emotional healing. Patients highly valued art creation, story, and group participation. The themes of the participants' open‐ended evaluations demonstrated the relevance of these three conceptual components and their merit in emotional recovery after cancer. This program evaluation lays the groundwork for future research into the therapeutic value of healing arts programs.