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Can the study of spontaneous drawings indicate those children with chronic illness?
J A Harrison1, N B Mogridge, K P Dawson
1Department of Paediatrics, Christchurch Hospital.
Insights
Children's drawings can help detect asthma. An expert familiar with art analysis accurately identified children with asthma from their drawings, unlike other assessment methods.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Pulmonology
- Child Psychology
- Art Therapy
Background:
- Chronic asthma affects numerous children globally.
- Early detection of chronic conditions in children is crucial for effective management.
- Investigating novel, non-invasive diagnostic tools is an ongoing area of research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the efficacy of children's drawings in detecting chronic asthma.
- To compare the diagnostic accuracy of different assessment methods for children's drawings.
Main Methods:
- A controlled study involving 48 children with chronic asthma and 52 healthy controls.
- Blind and independent assessment of children's drawings by three observers with varying expertise.
- One observer used a scoring method, another used clinical experience, and the third utilized art analysis expertise.
Main Results:
- The observer with expertise in art analysis significantly outperformed the other two observers (p < 0.001) in identifying children with asthma.
- The scoring method and clinical experience-based assessment showed no significant difference from chance in detecting asthma.
Conclusions:
- Artistic analysis of children's drawings demonstrates potential as a diagnostic aid for identifying chronic asthma.
- Expertise in art analysis is superior to general clinical experience or scoring methods for this specific application.
- Further research is warranted to validate drawings as a reliable biomarker for pediatric asthma.
Abstract:
A controlled study of children's drawings as a means of detecting those with chronic disease, in the form of asthma, was carried out. The drawings produced by 48 children with chronic asthma and those of 52 controls were studied blindly and independently by three observers. One observer used a scoring method, the second used direct assessment, based on experience of children with chronic disease. The third observer based the assessment on knowledge and the use of drawings in clinical practice. The observer with a knowledge of drawings per se was clearly superior (p less than 0.001) in detecting those with asthma, while the other two observers' ability was no better than chance.
