Smoking groups therapy, new paths in art therapy. A cognitive behavioral art therapy study in a community municipal health centre

Abstract

Nowadays, art therapy increasingly consolidates and expands its presence in the field of health, with the capacity to affront relevant issues in our societies. The inclusion of art therapy in group therapies for smoking cessation is novel within the public health services. The initial objectives of this study were to seek a complementary form of collaboration within the psychological-pharmacological treatments in progress, to analyze the psychological and self-regulatory functions of internal images, and to consider art creation as a possible factor of adherence to smoking treatment. The combination of art therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy made it possible to converge the objectives of the two types of interventions. A mixed research methodology (MMI) was used, with data collection and analysis through qualitative and quantitative instruments. Were invited to voluntarily participate in a 9-week program, the all 14 persons already involved in a tobacco group. The results showed that those members of the tobacco group who continued and completed the treatment successfully had attended the complementary art therapy program for smokers too. However, it must be said that there were also art therapy users that they abandoned the treatment before finishing. The analysis of the works and the observation of the development of the sessions inform positively on some functions –psychological– of art creation as memory, hope, acceptance of the pain, self-knowledge, and rebalancing. An open group interview at the end of the treatment showed that motivation, learning a new language and walking through other perspectives were the highlights of the program by the users. Moreover, evaluation questionnaire revealed subjetive feelings of relaxation, and other items supported the pathways of adherence and self-knowledge already observed with other analyzers.