Elsevier

The Arts in Psychotherapy

Volume 55, September 2017, Pages 111-115
The Arts in Psychotherapy

Research article
Therapeutic alliance is a factor of change in arts therapies and psychomotor therapy with adults who have mental health problems

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2017.05.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Arts therapies demonstrated positive therapeutic alliance, especially task collaboration.

  • Positive alliance was associated with higher decrease in depressive symptoms in early phase of therapy.

  • Positive alliance in later phase was associated with greater decrease in anxiety symptoms.

Abstract

The outcomes of relational therapies depend on the ability to create an open and cooperative alliance (task, bond, goal) between client and therapist. The present research investigated the influences of 17 weeks of arts therapies on the therapeutic alliance and symptom change for 164 adults with mental health problems using the Working Alliance Inventory-12 and the Brief Symptom Inventory. Results show that alliance scores increased over time during arts-therapies, and psychomotor therapy specifically for the task subscale. Furthermore, results show that there was a significant effect of the therapeutic alliance on symptom reduction (depression and anxiety) during treatment. Results indicate that participants who experienced the alliance as positive showed a higher decrease in depressive symptoms in the early phase and for anxiety symptoms in the later phase of the therapy. The present results give first implications of the role of the therapeutic alliance in arts-therapies and psychomotor therapy within adults with mental health needs.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

The present study included 164 adult participants (68 male, 55 female, 41 without registration of gender) who were all inpatient clients in a mental health care clinic in the Netherlands. Inpatient clients who started psychomotor therapy, music therapy or art therapy were informed about the aim and procedure of this study and were asked to participate. This invitation to participate was conducted by a therapist, usually not involved in the treatment of the client. When a client agreed, she/he

Results

Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, main effects, and interaction effects of the WAI-12 and the BSI during the three measurements. Using a general linear model with repeated measures, it was shown that there was an increase of the total score of the WAI-12 during AT [F(71) = 6.924; p = 0.010]. This increase was also seen in the WAI subscale ‘task’ [F(76) = 10.723, p = 0.002]. For the WAI subscales ‘goals’ and ‘bond’ only a trend was observed (p = 0.08; respectively p = 0.056). Next, we

Discussion

The present study was conducted to investigate the development of the therapeutic alliance, (i.e., the client-therapist bond, agreement on goals and collaboration on task) in arts therapies and psychomotor therapy over time. Furthermore, we examined whether a good therapeutic alliance was related to symptom change (depression and anxiety) among adults in mental health care. To our knowledge, this was the first study on arts therapies and psychomotor therapy to investigate whether symptom change

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