This study is to examine the effects of group art therapy on adolescents
with depression and suicidal ideation. Among first year students attending a
middle school in a city, 11 students who revealed a high level of depression
and suicidal ideation participated in this study under the agreement of their
parents. The participants were assigned to a control group of 5 and an
experimental group of 6. The group art therapy program consisted of 15
sessions. It lasted from October 10th, 2011 to December 1st, 2011, twice a
week, each session 90 minutes long. The instruments for this study included
Beck Depression Inventory(BDI), Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation(SSI),
Draw-a-Person in the Rain(DAPR) and Draw-a-Story(DAS). Data were
analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 19.0 program. Wilcoxon signed ranks
test was performed to check the statistical significance of scores before and
after the group art therapy. In addition, drawings before and after the group
art therapy were analyzed to trace the change in depression and suicidal
ideation. The findings of this study are as follows. First, group art therapy
was effective in reducing the depression of adolescents. Second, group art
therapy was effective in reducing suicidal tendencies. The limitation of this
study is that only a pretest and posttest were given without a follow-up
evaluation to measure the continuing effect of the therapy program.