The Effect of Traumatic and Non-Traumatic Grief on Children's Human Figure Drawings

Current national statistics highlight the large number of children who experience traumatic (death of a parent or relative living in home) and non-traumatic grief (death of relative not living in home) prior to age 18 years. Identification and treatment of this population is vital to long-term mental health. Previous research suggests children's drawings reflect experiences that arc difficult to verbalize, but to date no study has been done to differentiate children who are experiencing traumatic grief from children who are experiencing non-traumatic grief using artwork. The goal of this quantitative, quasi- experimental, correlational design was to determine if there were significant differences in the 50 archival HFDs of children between the ages of 6-12 years old who have experienced traumatic grief, and 50 archival HFDs from children who have experienced non-traumatic grief, matching them by age and gender. Three independent raters who reached 100% agreement scored the drawings. One-way ANOVAs were utilized to find significant trends in amount and type of emotional indicators, as well as differences by gender using the Koppitz Scale of Emotional Indicators. Of the thirty emotional indicators, nine were found to be significantly greater in number in the traumatically grieving children's HFDs. Three emotional indicators specific to the traumatically grieving children were monster or grotesque figure, no body, and shading of body and limbs. Significant differences on five emotional indicators also separated traumatically grieving males and females. These results expand the existing knowledge base of children's HFDs and illustrate how art therapy could be utilized to help identify and differentiate traumatic and non-traumatic grief in children, paving the way for future research with grieving children.