By considering the situation with continuous and serious economic gap, the
psychological support to find the true ‘Myself’ is very necessary for low-income
group teenagers who face senses of loss, alienation and mental pessimism.
Especially, the expression with self-portrait can be an appropriate art activity to
express human emotions and ego for teenagers in low-income and high-risk suicide
groups with unstable psychological characteristics.
Therefore, this study purposes to figure out whether the teenagers in
low-income and high-risk suicide groups could help to create self-esteem change,
the positive effect of self-portrait, through own expression to know about their
own ego. In this study for teenagers in low-income, and high-risk suicide group,
we analyzed art expression activities, observation journal of each time observing
non-linguistic expression responses and changes and 5 self-portrait visual materials
through activities by target group.
Also, the self-esteem (Coopersmith (1967)) range was implemented with
preliminary and post inspections to figure out the document materials in the forms
of autobiography and art work effect after the art activities. This study showed
that the art expression with self-portrait could be an art approach in the means of
facing and symbolizing the negative shadow of themselves, sublimate negative pain
and change into positive self-esteem.
The study expects that the art expression activity of self-portrait could be
recognized as the most appropriate art expressional instruction method, and the
teenagers in low-income and high-risk suicide groups with psychological
complexity could know that they are valuable, lead their lives to positive attitudes
to heal their repressed emotions, and could be used at the site.