A Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Art Therapy on Self Esteem among the Orphans in Selected Orphanages at Mangalore

Orphans are children who are deprived of parents. The feeling of being an orphan is devastating which affects the child psychologically which can lower their Self–esteem and Self-worth. Art Therapy has proved to be effective in improving self-esteem. Art therapy includes a variety of techniques such as finger painting, clay modeling, making stuffed toys, theme painting. The aim of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of art therapy on self esteem among the orphans in selected orphanages at Mangalore. A pre-experimental one group pre post design was used and purposive sampling technique was adopted to select the sample the total 42 orphan childrens. Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale was used to assess level of self esteem among orphan children. The results show that in the pre-test, out of the 79 sample selected, 53.16% had low self-esteem and 46.84% had moderate self-esteem, whereas in the post-test, the self-esteem score of the subjects increased and only 16.67% had low self-esteem and 83.33% had moderate self-esteem. The mean post-test score (17.37±3.37) was more than the mean pre-test score (12.62±1.08), which suggests that there was improvement in the level of self-esteem. There was a significant difference in the level of self-esteem among the orphans before and after art therapy (calculated value: t41=8.40, p<0.05) was more than the table value (t41=1.96). Hence it revealed that art therapy was effective in improving level of self-esteem among orphans.