The Use of Art Therapy for Reducing Self-Injury Behavior: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Self-injury behavior is one way for individuals to escape from their problems, but this method tends to be harmful because it is self-defeating. This behavior is referred to as self-injury but this behavior does not have the individual's intention to commit suicide. This behavior occurs in all circles, including adolescents and adults. This paper aims to describe art therapy's effectiveness in reducing self-injury behavior, while the research method uses a systematic literature review method. Journal searches were conducted using databases such as Pubmed, Google scholar, ScienceDirect, NCBI, Crossref, and Scopus using the keywords (“self-injury”) AND (“behavior”) AND (“art therapy”). Inclusion criteria in this research are a) English or Indonesian language journals, b) published in 2011-2022, and c) using quantitative, qualitative, experimental, or other research methods. The results of analysis on the selected articles showed that art therapy intervention can be applied to reduce distress and depression that causes individual to engage in self-injury behavior.