Simona Weinstein

Project title: The efficacy of art therapy as a treatment for school refusal

Simona is a qualified and experienced creative psychotherapist. Her work has been published and televised. She has lectured and practiced both in Australia and internationally. Her clients range from the Australian Government to specialised mental health facilities, schools, corporate organisations, and private practice. Simona’s work extends into exploring individual accountabilities and group dynamics, for people living with mental health issues, survivors of trauma, grief and loss, physical health concerns, spectrum disorders, behavioural concerns, relationship issues and school refusal.

This research aims to understand the efficacy of art therapy to reduce the level of school refusal in children. There is limited research exploring art therapy and school attendance. Current research outlines the possible causes of school refusal including trauma and life stressors. Parental strategies, whole of school strategies, and individual student programs exist to address school refusal, but limited art therapy strategies are utilised specifically for this purpose.

Art therapy is offered as a whole-of-school approach in Australian schools, demonstrating positive impact on peer interaction, emotional literacy, self-regulation, and increased concentration/focus.

In October 2022, the Senate referred an inquiry into the national trend of school refusal to the Education and Employment References Committee to report its findings on 21 June 2023. This research is timely to inform the Australian government’s approach to school refusal.

Across the research there is no data indicating a direct impact of art therapy on school attendance. This research is designed to test the clinical effectiveness and current practice of art therapy for school attendance. This is a case study research using flexible exploratory research design, which gathers both quantitative and qualitative data to study the session notes and art works created in the art therapy sessions, and questionnaires with parents/carers which will inform interviews. The data gathered from questionnaire responses and the art therapy sessions has been analysed by extrapolating common themes mentioned in both sets of the data gathered.

This research journey has been epic. I have travailed the fear of ‘research failure’, experienced the birthing pains of becoming an academic researcher, yearned to be free as a bird whilst being caged into the constraints of research parameters of the human ethics research committee, acknowledged my vulnerability in my ‘not’ flawless research project, cried hoping that it is all ‘worth it’, and then demonstrated perseverance to push through knowing I am but one brick in the process of this new research. It must start somewhere.