Using the Feats With the Person Picking an Apple From A Tree Art Directive to Diagnose Depression in SEB/SBD Children Placed in Special Education Classrooms

Thirty-eight severely emotionally disturbed and / or severely behavior disordered (SED / SBD) students age 7-14 participated in this study. Each student was individually asked to draw “a person picking an apple from a tree” (PPAT). The drawings were rated by four Art Therapists according to the Formal Elements of Art Therapy Scale (FEATS) (Gantt & Tabone, 1998). The study hypothesized that using the FEATS with the PPAT would indicate the presence of depression in SED / SBD children placed in special education classrooms. The drawings produced were divided into two groups based on whether the artist’s mental health diagnosis included depression (the D group, which included 10 drawings) or did not include depression (the N group, which included 28 drawings). The data collected was analyzed in order to reveal patterns in the FEATS scores. In this study, the D group scored higher than the N group on 10 of the 14 subscales (FEATS #2,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,13, and 14), the same on one (FEATS #7), and lower on three (FEATS #1,3, and 12). Individuals diagnosed with 299.80 Asperger’s Disorder / Pervasive Developmental Disorder generally scored low on Scales #1,3,4,5, 7,8,10, and 12 whereas those diagnosed with 300.00 Anxiety Disorder NOS had high scores on Scales #1,2,3,4, and 7. The Scale that had the largest difference in scores between the D group and the N group was #8 Problem Solving, which also had the largest standard deviation in scores. Overall, the students with a diagnosis of 299.80 Asperger’s Disorder / Pervasive Developmental Disorder tended to have lower average scores than the students with other diagnoses in the SED / SBD classes. The results of this study appear to validate that there is a relationship between certain patterns in FEATS scores and various psychiatric diagnoses in SED/SBD children in special education classrooms