Anthroposophic Art Therapy in Chronic Disease: A Four-Year Prospective Cohort St

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EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing

Volume 3, Issue 4, July 2007, Pages 365-371

Anthroposophic Art Therapy in Chronic Disease: A Four-Year

Prospective Cohort Study

Harald J. Hamre MD, M. Witt MD, Anja Glockmann, Renatus

Ziegler PhD, Stefan N. Willich MD, MPH and Helmut Kiene MD

Institute for Applied Epistemology and Medical Methodology,

Freiburg, Germany; Institute of Social Medicine, Epidemiology, and

Health Economics, Charité University Medical Center, Berlin, Germany

Society for Cancer Research, Arlesheim, Switzerland

Background

Anthroposophic art therapy (painting, clay modeling, music, and

speech exercises) is used in 28 countries but has not yet been

studied in primary care.

Objective: To study clinical outcomes in patients treated with

anthroposophic art therapy for chronic diseases.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Fifty-four medical practices in Germany.

Participants and Interventions: One hundred sixty-one consecutive

outpatients (primary care: n = 150), aged 5-71 years, were treated

by 52 different art therapists.

Main outcome measures:

Disease and symptom scores (physician and patient assessment,

respectively, 0-10) and quality of life (adults: SF-36 Health

Survey, children: KINDL Questionnaire for Measuring Health-Related

Quality of Life in Children and Adolescents). Outcomes were measured

after 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months; SF-36 and symptom scores were

also measured after 48 months.

Results:

Most common indications were mental disorders (60.9% of patients,

primarily depression, fatigue, and anxiety) and neurological

diseases (6.8%). The median number of therapy sessions was 15;

median therapy duration was 161 days. All outcomes except KINDL

improved significantly between baseline and all subsequent follow-

ups. Improvements from baseline to 12 months were: disease score

from (mean ± standard deviation) 6.69 ± 1.72 to 2.46 ± 1.90 (P

< .001), symptom score from 5.99 ± 1.69 to 3.40 ± 2.08 (P < .001),

SF-36 physical component summary measure from 44.12 ± 10.03 to 48.68

± 9.47 (P < .001), and SF-36 mental component summary measure from

35.07 ± 12.23 to 42.13 ± 11.51 (P < .001). All these improvements

were maintained until last follow-up.

Conclusion: Patients receiving anthroposophic art therapy had long-

term reduction of chronic disease symptoms and improvement of

quality of life.