Effects of Art Therapy on Anger and Self-esteem in Aggressive Children

Verbal communication is difficult for children and more difficult for aggressive ones. This research use art therapy as an effective intervention to reduce anger and increase self-esteem of aggressive children with 7 to 11 years old. Thirty children were allocated to either a control group or an art therapy group equally and randomly. The intervention was performed once weekly for 10 weeks. Self-esteem and anger were measured at the beginning and at the end of 10 weeks, using the cooper smith Self-esteem Inventory (1967) and nelson & finch (2000) children inventory of anger. After 10 weeks, the art therapy group showed significant reduction of anger (p<0/001) and improvement of self-esteem (p<0/0001) compared with control group, except the educational self-esteem subscale that did not show significant reduction in compare with control group (p<0/1). These finding suggest that art therapy can reduce anger and improve self-esteem of aggressive children. While innate characteristics of art combine with concepts of psychology approaches such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, art therapy could be a considerable intervention, especially for children.