The Descriptive Assessment for Psychiatric Art (DAPA): update and further research

Painting and drawing is used as a treatment modality in psychiatry; however, assessments presently lack valid and reliable measures. We used the DAPA, a published quantitative measure of adult psychiatric artwork on a sample of painting produced in naturalistic conditions by 86 inpatients with four major categories of disabling psychiatric disorders and 23 controls. The replication was successful. Clear broad differences between psychiatric patients and controls and discrete differences in patient type can be differentiated when the conditions under which the patients produce their work are not controlled.