An art therapy group for impulsive children

Abstract

This article describes the setting up, running and evaluation of an outpatient group for impulsive children, which lasted for seven months. It explores the difficulties encountered in helping such children to relate more successfully, the importance of the art activities in containing the intense emotions of the group and the necessity for the therapists to change their expectations of the children and to adapt aspects of the way they ran the group as it developed. Two group sessions are described and the progress of one child through the lifetime of the group is looked at in more depth to illustrate the way in which individual children benefited from the experience.