Hospitalization may have negative effects on child development. It takes the child off her routine and prevents her from contacts with stimulating environments. Art therapy, a means of expression and creation, enlarges the child’s knowledge of the world and favors his/her cognitive, affectionate, physical and social development, and for this reason, it must be present in all children’s lives, particularly of those who are hospitalized. This work aimed at comparing the children’s three-dimensional performance and construction work using hospital scrap during their hospitalization, before and after art therapy intervention. It was proposed a quantitative approach with quasi experimental design that had a control group (n=9) and a group which was submitted to art therapy intervention (n=10). Results show that these interventions were effective in improving the children’s threedimensional performance and construction work using hospital scrap. Art therapy constituted a means to positively guide the hospitalized child’s development variables as well as to neutralize the naturally arising affection-related factors, in addition to exposing the child’s healthiest potentials that are seldom stimulated in the hospitalization setting.
Art therapy; Mental health; Child; Pediatric nursing
