Drawing and visual art interventions for anxiety in children aged 5–12: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials
Yu Jia, Shaojie Zhang, Diying Liao · 2026
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Description
Yu Jia, Shaojie Zhang, and Diying Liao review trials of drawing and visual art activities for anxious children aged five to twelve. Art tasks are cheap, gentle tools often used to calm children facing medical procedures. The team searched six databases for randomized trials and pooled their results.
Ten trials with 816 children qualified. Eight, set in hospitals or around procedures, compared art activities with usual care or non-art controls. In those, children who drew or made art showed much lower anxiety right after the activity. Removing any single trial, or dropping weaker studies, did not change the direction of the result, though the trials differed from each other a lot. The authors conclude that art likely eases short-term anxiety in medical settings. They caution that the evidence does not support one blanket effect across all settings where children feel anxious.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yu Jia, Shaojie Zhang, Diying Liao |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 38 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |