The purpose of this study is to carry out a program of cognitive- behavioral group art
therapy for women in the mid-life crisis and to make it possible to bring about a positive effect
on depression and crisis.
In the method of study, 14 study subjects i.e. women that are between 40 and 55 years old,
whose depression score is above 16 points, the evaluation marks of the mid-life crisis above 3.0 and whose academic background is beyond high school, were selected according to the above criterion. An experimental group of 7 persons and a control group of 7 persons were constituted.
During the period of study, from August 17th, 2005 to January 1st, 2006, a preliminary meeting
had been held twice and this study had been realized in 17 sessions, once a week, each time for 180 minutes. As a tool of study, the Beck Depression Inventory test (BDI) had been carried out and the scale of the mid-life crisis of Kim Ae Soon, Youn Jin(1991) had been measured before and after the test and both had been analysed. The data, with the collected study results, had been analysed with the SPSS 12.0 program used by Windows; as statistical method, the preand post tests of the Analysis of Covariance(ANCOVA) had been carried out.
The result obtained from this study is that the program of cognitive-behavioral group art
therapy has the effect of reducing the depression of women in mid-life crisis and also to reduce
the emotional crisis of women in mid-life crisis. When in cognitive therapy a problem is treated,
the field of cognition is mainly treated in a logical and rational way, but in the process of art
therapy, the composition of works of art has a certain illogicality. for in may cases, they have a
mainly unconscious substance, In case of art therapy, in view of the limits in the cognitive
approach, if in a later study a therapeutical approach could be made where a compromise
between the cognitive method and the psychodynamic method is reached, in my opinion, this
approach will be much more effective.
Key Words : Women in the Mid-Life, Cognitive-Behavioral Group Therapy, Depression, Emotional Crisis