The purpose of this study is to inquire the possibility of utilizing the person-centered expressive arts therapy as a short-term treatment program for assisting rehabilitation of the alcoholic. The target group was the inpatients from the S hospital in Cheong won County, which specialized in the treatment for the alcoholic: 7 for the experiment treatment group, 7 for the treatment control group, and 8 for the non-treatment control group. The experiment treatment group received the person-centered expressive arts therapy; the treatment control group got a Christianity based inner healing program. Both of programs consist of a total 12 session twice a week and each session lasting 50 minutes to 1 hour and half.
Research instruments used are the Self-Esteem Inventory, Barratt Impulsiveness Scale Ⅱ, Alcoholism Screening Test of National Seoul Mental Hospital and K-HTP. Forthe qualitative research, all the activities of each session are observed and recorded and took photographs; the documentation and analysis of the participant interviews about the program evaluation at the post-test. The results are as follows. First, the impulsivity of the experiment group was lessened while the impulsivity ofthe other two groups was increased. Second, the self-esteem of the experiment group increased considerably while the one of the treatment control group went up slightly and the one of the non-treatment control group was decreased. Third, the follow-up study after 5 months showed the maintenance of the sobriety rate was highest, 42.9%, in the experiment treatment group and the effectiveness of the program continued as shown in the K-HTP test, executed in pre-,post-,and follow-up test, of the two participants from the experiment treatment group. With these findings, it would be demonstrated that the person-centered expressive arts therapy is effective in assisting rehabilitation of the alcoholic. And it would be reason able to conduct further research on identifying the relation between the test variables among segmented groups depending on their symptoms.
Key Words: Alcoholics, Person-Centered Expressive Arts Therapy, Impulsivity, Self-esteem