Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- Creators: Essary, Alison
- Creators: Mauricio, Anne
Description
The goal of my study is to test the overarching hypothesis that art therapy is effective because it targets emotional dysregulation that often accompanies significant health stressors. By reducing the salience of illness-related stressors, art therapy may improve overall mood and recovery, particularly in patients with cancer. After consulting the primary literature and review papers to develop psychological and neural mechanisms at work in art therapy, I created a hypothetical experimental procedure to test these hypotheses to explain why art therapy is helpful to patients with chronic illness. Studies found that art therapy stimulates activity of multiple brain regions involved in memory retrieval and the arousal of emotions. I hypothesize that patients with chronic illness have a reduced capacity for emotion regulation, or difficulty recognizing, expressing or altering illness-related emotions (Gross & Barrett, 2011). Further I hypothesize that art therapy improves mood and therapeutic outcomes by acting on the emotion-processing regions of the limbic system, and thereby facilitating the healthy expression of emotion, emotional processing, and reappraisal. More mechanistically, I propose art therapy reduces the perception or salience of stressors by reducing amygdala activity leading to decreased activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The art therapy literature and my hypothesis about its mechanisms of action became the basis of my proposed study. To assess the effectiveness of art therapy in alleviating symptoms of chronic disease, I am specifically targeting patients with cancer who exhibit a lack of emotional regulation. Saliva is collected 3 times a week on the day of intervention: morning after waking, afternoon, and evening. Stress levels are tested using one-hour art therapy sessions over the course of 3 months. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) assesses an individual's perceived stress and feelings in past and present situations, for the control and intervention group. To measure improvement in overall mood, 10 one-hour art sessions are performed on patients over 10 weeks. A one-hour discussion analyzing the participants' artwork follows each art session. The Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) assesses overall mood for the intervention and control groups. I created rationale and predictions based on the intended results of each experiment.
ContributorsAluri, Bineetha C. (Author) / Orchinik, Miles (Thesis director) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Essary, Alison (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School for the Science of Health Care Delivery (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) affects nearly 10% of adult women in general population samples. In populations of impoverished ethnic minority women, those lifetime prevalence rates may possibly exceed national averages due to lack of mental health resources. Mothers with PTSD are more likely to exhibit negative parenting styles and experience higher levels of perceived parenting stress, both of which are associated with poor child outcomes. However, there is a lack of evidence on how maternal PTSD may affect parenting for ethnic minority mothers. This study evaluated the prevalence of lifetime PTSD and its effects on parenting stress and infant problem behaviors in a sample of 322 low-income Mexican-American mothers (mean age = 27.8; 86% born in Mexico). Lifetime PTSD diagnoses were assessed at a prenatal home visit (24-36 weeks gestation) using the WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). Mothers reported parenting hassles at 24-weeks postpartum (PDLH; Crnic & Greenberg, 1990), and child problem behaviors at infant age one-year (BITSEA; Briggs-Gowan et al., 2004). I hypothesized that 1) women with PTSD would report more parenting stress than women without PTSD, 2) women with PTSD would report more infant problem behavior symptoms than women without PTSD, and 3) parenting stress mediates the relationship between PTSD and infant problem behavior. Results found that 16.5% of women met criteria for past or present PTSD. Compared to women without PTSD, women with PTSD reported more parenting stress but a similar level of infant problem behaviors. Parenting stress significantly mediated the relationship between maternal PTSD and infant problem behaviors. Study findings suggest a need for mental health screenings during prenatal care in order to promote the healthy development of high-risk children.
ContributorsPreves, Ashley Maria (Author) / Luecken, Linda (Thesis director) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Mauricio, Anne (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12