Armstrong Victoria Gray, Ross Josephine
Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2022 May 17;13:732562. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.732562. eCollection 2022.
During the period of COVID-19 restrictions, we offered vulnerable families with 0 to 3 year old children boxes of art resources and guided creative activities to do together at home. This paper explores families' experiences of this intervention, highlighting their perceptions of change in wellbeing and attachment. There is a developing case for the social benefits of art, including the impact of arts on mental health and on the wellbeing of children. However, we know that social factors impact upon arts participation, and existing inequalities and mental health difficulties have been exacerbated in the context of the pandemic. This project aimed to adapt to restrictions, to provide a meaningful remote intervention, supporting parent-infant dyads to have positive interactions through art making. We sought to explore the benefits of this intervention for infants and parents with a view to understanding more about the psychological benefits of art participation and about ways to engage families into art making, as well as thinking about how best we can evidence these kinds of arts in health interventions. Preliminary findings showed promising outcomes from the art boxes and this paper brings together the full results, primarily based on interviews with sixteen parents and four referrers alongside collected feedback. We highlight potential mechanisms for change within the intervention and detail the perceived impact of the art boxes in supporting attachment. Parents felt that the art-boxes facilitated changes in their own wellbeing that would make them more available to connection, and recognised changes for babies that reflected their increased capacity to mentalise about their child. Importantly, there were also concrete changes for the dyad that represented improved connection, such as more playful time together and increased shared attention and eye contact. Our observations suggest that the quality of the parent-infant relationship benefited from home-based art intervention, and we speculate about the potential efficacy of this approach beyond the pandemic.
在新冠疫情限制措施实施期间，我们为有0至3岁孩子的弱势家庭提供了艺术资源盒，并指导他们在家中共同开展创意活动。本文探讨了家庭对这一干预措施的体验，重点突出了他们对幸福感和依恋关系变化的看法。艺术的社会效益正在不断显现，包括艺术对心理健康和儿童幸福感的影响。然而，我们知道社会因素会影响艺术参与，并且在疫情背景下，现有的不平等和心理健康问题更加严重。该项目旨在适应限制措施，提供有意义的远程干预，支持亲子二元组通过艺术创作进行积极互动。我们试图探索这一干预措施对婴儿和父母的益处，以便更深入地了解艺术参与的心理益处、让家庭参与艺术创作的方法，以及思考如何在健康干预中最好地证明这类艺术活动的效果。初步研究结果显示艺术资源盒取得了令人期待的成果，本文汇总了完整的结果，主要基于对16位家长和4位推荐人的访谈以及收集到的反馈。我们强调了干预措施中潜在的变化机制，并详细阐述了艺术资源盒在支持依恋关系方面的感知影响。家长们认为艺术资源盒促进了他们自身幸福感的变化，使他们更愿意与孩子建立联系，并且认识到婴儿的变化反映出他们对孩子心理理解能力的增强。重要的是，二元组之间也有具体的变化，表现为关系改善，比如更多一起玩耍的时间、更多的共同关注和眼神交流。我们的观察表明，基于家庭的艺术干预有益于亲子关系质量，并且我们推测了这种方法在疫情之后的潜在效果。
