Art therapy in psycho-oncology--recruitment of participants and gender differences in usage

Over the last years, there has been increasing focus on the effect of art therapy for oncological patients. The small sample sizes of these studies show that recruiting participants is difficult and has been poorly investigated. It is also apparent that women participate in art therapy more often than men. The question remains why this difference exists and if participating men benefit from these courses more, less or in a different way than women do.

We developed and tested an outpatient art intervention for cancer patients, whereby different recruitment strategies were documented. Participants were questioned about their mental health (HADS), coping strategies (FKV), and quality of life (EORTC QLQ-C30) at the beginning and end of the intervention.

The recruitment strategies included personal letters, referrals from the "Information Center For Cancer Patients", press releases and leaflets/posters distributed to hospitals and medical practices. About half of the participants (N=35), especially the male ones, took part in response to receiving a personal letter. All in all, 14 men and 60 women took part in the intervention whereby all 18 drop-outs were female. There were no significant gender differences regarding distress and quality of life before and after the intervention (men=14; women=41).

A variety of approaches and intense public relations are necessary to recruit patients for art therapy. Describing recruitment strategies more in detail is suggested for upcoming art therapy studies. First gender specific differences were found in recruitment and usage. Exploring further questions in this area referring to quality of life and distress larger and uniformly distributed samples are desirable.