Can the study of spontaneous drawings indicate those children with chronic illness?

A controlled study of children's drawings as a means of detecting those with chronic disease, in the form of asthma, was carried out. The drawings produced by 48 children with chronic asthma and those of 52 controls were studied blindly and independently by three observers. One observer used a scoring method, the second used direct assessment, based on experience of children with chronic disease. The third observer based the assessment on knowledge and the use of drawings in clinical practice. The observer with a knowledge of drawings per se was clearly superior (p less than 0.001) in detecting those with asthma, while the other two observers' ability was no better than chance.