Abstract
Depression is a complex psychological disorder. Although psychological counseling and traditional Western art therapy have obtained robust results in the diagnosis and treatment of depression, they are not well accepted in China due to cultural differences. Chinese flower and bird painting has been favored in China and beyond. It is of considerable significance to studying the auxiliary treatment of depression by using Chinese flower and bird painting. First of all, during observation of the painting style and works of patients with different severities of depression, such phenomena as broken strokes, roughness at the end of the painting brush, stroke discontinuity, and uneven breath are noted. These signs reflect impatience and lack of control in patients with depression. Subsequently, a three-stage Chinese flower and bird painting art therapy intervention focusing on breathing training to improve ink brush control is established, and this adjuvant art therapy was applied to 56 people with mild and moderate depression. Experimental results show that, via a 24-week Chinese flower and bird painting art therapy intervention, the observation group has a greater decline in Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD) scores than the control group ( p < .05). The study on electroencephalogram (EEG) shows that The normal rate of brain waves of the observation group in the middle and late stages of treatment and after treatment is 73%, significantly higher than 32% in the control group. This research shows that Chinese flower and bird painting can be used as a new and effective adjuvant treatment for depression in line with Chinese characteristics and is worthy of in-depth research.
Highlights
Depression is characterized by high recurrence and disability rates, even leading to suicide (Jacobs, 2003), and lifetime prevalence of depression could reach 15.7% (Keller & Berndt, 2002)
The Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD) score of the observation group at 12 weeks of treatment is significantly lower than that of the control group (p < .05), as shown in Figure 2 and Table 3. During this art therapy process, more than 90% of the 110 cases participating in the treatment manage to complete the treatment process, with five cases quitting for various reasons, indicating that the art therapy can be highly accepted in China and is easy to conduct
There are many previous studies on art therapy depression, which suggests that art therapy has positive effects on improving depression in women with breast cancer (Li et al, 2020)
Summary
The preferred treatment is medication, especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (Zhao et al, 2019), such as fluoxetine (MacíasCortés et al, 2013), paroxetine (Li et al, 2020), and sertraline (Padmapriya et al, 2020), which are mainstream antidepressants. Antidepressants are prone to drug resistance and side effects (Högberg, 2014; Howland, 2007), and long-term treatment has limited effectiveness accompanied by a high recurrence rate (Fond, 2015), which can lead to patient non-compliance. A combination of psychological counseling (Tao, 2007), Western painting, music and dance (Ugur et al, 2016), and other adjuvant treatments with medication has become the mainstream approach to depression treatment in Western developed countries. Psychotherapy was launched late in China (Ng et al, 2016), and psychotherapy bears a strong stigma in Chinese culture, which limits its effectiveness in solving the depressionrelated social problems in China
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