According to a recent study, art therapy may be able to assist women in adjusting to menopause.
In a group of overweight women who had entered menopause, creative arts therapy paired with nutrition instruction dramatically improved quality of life, stress, anxiety, and body image, according to researchers. Additionally, blood pressure and body mass index decreased in all subjects.
Lead researcher Rebekka Dieterich-Hartwell, a research fellow with Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions, said, “We learned that the participants, being part of a relatively understudied and neglected population: women who are overweight and in the postmenopause stage of life, appreciated having a special time and space set aside just for them that permitted mindful art, writing, and movement experiences.”
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Menopause
In the tiny study, three women attended a 16-week online intervention, with weekly sessions facilitated by a nutritionist, a dance movement therapist and an art therapist. The art therapy sessions focused on quality of life, emotional regulation, body image and stress management. For example, participants were asked to depict the transition from a negative to a positive emotion.
One woman started with a red “angry” swirl of oil pastels on one side of a piece of paper and a blue boxy structure with small circles inside representing “contentment” on the other side. She connected the two sides with a purple “rainbow.” Nutrition education included topics like choosing healthy foods and beverages, managing portion sizes and staying hydrated. The results suggest that an integrated approach can help women with menopause deal with the physical and emotional challenges that come with that stage of life.
“While this was a very small sample and the findings cannot be generalized, they indicate that a multimodal intervention with educational, expressive and creative components can be beneficial for the physiological and psychosocial well-being of postmenopausal women who have an elevated BMI and are at risk for cardiovascular disease,” Dieterich-Hartwell said in a university news release. The team is following up on this study with a larger randomized, controlled trial, which has received funding from the state of Pennsylvania. The trial starts this month.
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