This study is to examine the effect of the group art therapy for the alternative high school
students by measuring changes in stress coping, social avoidance & anxiety. The group art therapy program was held twice a week, 100 mintues per session, in total 20 sessions. For verifying the stress coping, the scale developed by Folkman & Lazarus(1985) and modified by Young-Hee Lee, Ae-Sun Park(1992) was used remodified under the consent of one counseling psychology specialist and 3 graduate students. And for verifying the social avoidance & anxiety, the scale developed by Watson & Friend(1965) and adapted by Jung-Hoon Choi, Jung-Yoon Lee(1994) was used.
The subjects of the study were 48 alternative high-school students (23 in control group & 25 in
experimental group) and the control group the same condition was selected for the comparison
analysis.
Before and after test was designed with having the group art therapy as its independent variable and the stress coping, social avoidance & anxiety as its dependent variables and the paired samples t-test was performed.
The results of this study are as follows. First, the students in experimental group used more
problem-focused stress coping rather than emotion-focused stress coping. Secondly, the students in experimental group showed decreased social avoidance & anxiety.
Key Words: The alternative high school students, Stress copying, Social avoidance & anxiety, Group Art Threrapy