New technologies for art therapy interventions tailored to severe disabilities

Individuals with multiple disabilities can have a wide range of characteristics depending on the combination and severity of the disabilities, such as intellectual disability, mobility issues, sensorial impairment, language issues and brain injury. New technologies can help therapists find an alternative way to engage and interact with clients by opening a communication window and starting to build the therapeutic relationship. The need to use more customized technological tools led us to develop the Painteraction system, an intuitive tool based on Augmented Reality that allows clients to be immersed in their own images. Just by moving their bodies individuals are able to make drawings and receive visual feedback, both from themselves and their therapists, as it appears on the screen. The pilot testing of Painteraction was performed on 21 inpatients at Istituto Serafico (Assisi, Italy) with severe/multiple disabilities in order to explore and assess reaction and responsiveness in a semi-structured art therapy setting. The sample was formed by 14 males and 7 females (N=21) between the ages of 7 and 35. All participants attended three twenty-minute individual art therapy sessions which were approximately one week apart. Through direct and indirect (video recordings) observation of the sessions, it appeared that the specific Augmented Reality tool introduced in the art therapy setting was easily accepted by most of the clients involved and generally allowed the development of an interpersonal therapist-client relationship. The present study therefore gave us the opportunity to test new digital tools in the challenging setting of severe/multiple disabilities and observe the huge potential of new media to empower clients to express themselves and their creativity, and ultimately overcome mental and physical barriers. We propose that Augmented Reality tools are particularly well-suited to art therapy and create an equally suitable therapeutic environment to address specific client needs.