Views: 2 Downloads: 1

Zahra Tahmasebi , Zahra Babaei^*

Abstract

This study was conducted in order to analyze the content of paintings of children with cancer undergoing chemotherapy, Small children who have tasted the harshness of the disease and chemotherapy. The physical, mental and social health of these children will be severely affected as a result of the disease and its treatment. A child's drawing is a copy of an image in his mind, and the technology of a child's drawings is an open window to thoughts and feelings. Children show their inner conflicts with the help of drawing, and even reduce these conflicts by drawing. The present study was conducted using the qualitative content analysis method in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 2015. The number of 30 cancer children undergoing chemotherapy in the  hospital of (Isfahan, Iran) was selected according to available methods and they were asked to draw freely so that the children could express their inner feelings completely freely. Then the drawings were analyzed by a clinical psychologist of children and the emotional indicators of the drawing were extracted and analyzed. in the interpretation of the painting to discover the child's conflicts with parents, discover the child's conflicts with siblings, identify regressions, discover the inner psychological conflicts of the child, measure the degree of the child's adaptation, discover the distances and measure the child's intimacy with the family. , assessment of child's mood problems, identification of childhood psychological nodes were discussed And content analysis of the data extracted from children's drawings led to the achievement of emotional indices. The most common indexes obtained were anxiety, depression and aggression.

Cancer children's drawings showed emotional indicators such as anxiety, depression and aggression. Their paintings can represent their inner world. In general, by using children's drawings, it is possible to investigate problems such as (depression, aggression, and anxiety) that children may face in connection with problems such as illness‎.