In the specialist assignment I present the assumption that the process of artistic expression influences an individual in a way that improves his or her quality of life. When implementing the contents of artistic expression I followed the model »creative journey« (P. Luzzatto, B. Gabriel, 2000), which was carried out over a period of ten weeks.
In the empirical part of the thesis a qualitative research is presented. The participants in this research were eleven women between thirty and sixty years of age. All the participants are patients suffering from diabetes and overweight. They are treated at the Diabetes infirmary at the Univerzitetni klinični center Ljubljana (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). The purpose of the research was to determine if participants’ cooperation in the program of artistic expression can contribute to an improved management of life with diabetes and overweight or in other words: if this program can contribute to an improved quality of their lives.
With the help of qualitative analysis of the participants’ experience during and following the program of artistic expression I acquired the answers to the following two research questions: how has the experience of the participants changed during the course of the program; I determined that through the analysis of audio recordings from the workshops they attended. The second research question was related to the changes in self-evaluation of the participants through the course of the program, which was researched through the analysis of written evaluations of the program carried out by the participants, through mood scales and scales measuring participants’ satisfaction with the final products. The qualitative analysis was rounded up with the analysis of the process of changes in the following dimensions: group dynamics, quality of participants’ experience, characteristics of artistic expression through the program of ten workshops of artistic expressions. I came to the conclusion that during the course of the program the majority of the participants have adopted a new way of accepting the spontaneity, which can function as a balancing point for the everyday stress that they experience as a result of their disease. This same insight was presented also by two of the participants of the course in the final evaluation of the program.
The analysis of the research has shown that two categories of experiencing the program of artistic expression especially stood out: the experience of positive feelings that was a result of the companionship between the participants and the experience of a mental relief. It can be observed from the analysis of the visual-analogue mood scale that all the participants of the workshops experienced a significant overall improvement in their mood. The analysis of the results of the satisfaction with their own products additionally showed that the participants were overall satisfied with their work.
I believe that the results will bring a notable contribution to any further research related to improving and upgrading of the content of the program of artistic expressions for patients with a physical disease.
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