The Effectiveness of Collage Therapy on Mental Health in orphans and Mistreated adolescent

Mostly the mental health terminology belongs to Goldberg, equivalent to well-being is defined as welfare and comfort in which the individual sees her/him powered and talented, coping with life’s stresses, working efficiently and successfully, and participating in the socials. Collage therapy is a kind of art therapy ending up with pasting different types of photos, textures, and objects without any limitations and creating a new piece of art that is entirely different from its constituted components with a variety of expressive capabilities. In positive psychology, the purpose of art therapy is the treatment of distresses through the emotional drain and inducing positive experiences and emotions. Some believe that gender is the factor of the effectiveness, while some others think that ineffectiveness, the gender has no role. Thus, based on the materials mentioned above, the purpose of the present research was to investigate the effectiveness of collage therapy on mental health in orphans and Mistreated adolescent. The research method was the pre-test, post-test with experimental and control groups. The statistical sample was 40 orphans and Mistreated adolescent that were under the supervision of the Welfare Office in the Kerman city. Using the simple random sampling of four equal groups consisting of ten boys and girls (each equal group number of boys and girls) placed into two experimental and two control groups (20 in each group). The experimental groups subjected to the researcher’s made package of collage therapy. All groups completed the Goldberg’s general health questionnaire (GHQ-28) as the pre-test and the post-test. The data were analyzed using multivariate covariance (MANCOVA), two-way analysis of variance, and t-test by the aid of SPSS-19. The analyses showed that collage therapy on depression (p˂0.001), anxiety (p˂0.001), social performance difficulty (p˂0.001), and physical symptoms (p˂0.001) was significant. The results regarding gender differences, the analysis of the t-test showed that there were differences in depression (p=0.042) and somatic symptoms (p=0.042), but there are no differences in anxiety (p=0.539) and social performance (p=0.437). The collage therapy has a positive effect on improving mental health dimensions (depression, anxiety, social functions, and somatic symptoms) in orphans and Mistreated boys and girls. Collage therapy has therapy ability, and in some cases, it was under the gender effect. Most of the differences lied in boys’ depression and somatic.