The Exploration of the Experience of Expressive Therapies in a Pediatric Medical Setting in the COVID-19 Pandemic through Arts-Based Research

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic presented a host of issues for hospitalized patients including increased anxiety, fear, isolation, and depression [1]. Expressive Therapies have been used in the pediatric medical setting for decades to support patients and families with coping, expression, processing, and rehabilitation [2-5]. Additionally, some studies suggest that Expressive Therapies were effective in helping ease the increase in mental health symptoms that occurred during the pandemic. During the pandemic the expressive therapies team at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah had to drastically shift their care to meet the increased safety requirements needed to prevent infection. This brought significant barriers and opportunities for learning [6]. There is a lack of research to understand the experience of expressive therapists during the pandemic. The authors aimed to understand this experience through an arts-based research lens using art to reflect on a patient relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic [7]. The authors then engaged in a witnessing process that was recorded and transcribed by the authors to search for themes [8-10] that described the authors’ experience of being an expressive therapist during that time. The six themes derived from the transcriptions were Extremes, Space, Back and Forth, Together, Exploration, and Unknown.