The effectiveness of painting therapy on reducing aggressive behavior in boy students with mild to moderate mental retardation

Introduction: Aggressive behavior is a common problem among children with mental retardation. One of the methods proposed for reducing aggressive behaviors is painting therapy. This study investigated the effects of painting therapeutic interventions on aggressive behaviors in primary school boys with mental retardation.Materials and methods: 60 students with intellectual disability were selected using the convenience sampling method. Semi-experimental method, with pretest-posttest design with control group, was used in this study. The mental retarded aggressive children's questionnaire (teacher form, B. D. GH) was used in the present study.Results: The difference between experimental and control groups in the fraction of pre-test was found meaningful in such components as verbal aggression to self, Non-verbal aggression to self (F=19.72, P<0.01), verbal aggression to others (F=22.53, P<0.01), non-verbal aggression to others (F = 44.71, P<0.01) and total aggression score (F=56.85, P<0.01) using the covariance analysis.Conclusion: This study showed painting therapy significantly reduces aggressive behavior in children with mental retardation. These results might be due to the act that this group of children got opportunity to show their feelings, emotions and the stresses accumulated from these feelings through painting prosaically.Key Words: Aggression, painting therapy, mental retardation