Abstract
This pilot study aimed at assessing the feasibility of capturing physiological evidence of reduced stress for hospitalized children following expressive arts therapy. Twenty-five patients were offered a novel form of expressive arts therapy, termed Healing Sock Creatures, during their stay in the hospital. Saliva samples were collected at two times in the afternoon for the purpose of measuring salivary cortisol levels. The patients were randomly assigned to two groups, a treatment group or a wait-list control group. A trend of decreased cortisol levels was apparent following therapy in the treatment group and concurrent steroid treatment, which is common in intensive care units, does not appear to interfere with the ability to measure decreased cortisol levels following therapy. Our results support the design of a formal study to assess physiological biomarkers of stress in hospital settings. To our knowledge, this is the first in-patient study assessing a biomarker of stress following expressive arts therapy for children.
Highlights
Our study was a randomized comparison between expressive arts therapy and no therapy for reducing salivary cortisol levels in hospitalized children
The trial was conducted at the pediatric in-patient ward and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of the California Pacific Medical Center from March 2012 to August 2012
Children were excluded if the hospital staff anticipated that the child would receive an invasive procedure during the 2-hour period planned for the experimental session
Summary
Our study was a randomized comparison between expressive arts therapy and no therapy for reducing salivary cortisol levels in hospitalized children. Healing Sock Creatures are crafted from vided saliva samples at the same times but did ing change, that might potentially influence unused, nonskid hospital socks, sewn and not receive any therapy or any special treatment stress (and cortisol) levels.
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