Copyright
©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Dec 19, 2019; 9(8): 107-120
Published online Dec 19, 2019. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v9.i8.107
Published online Dec 19, 2019. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v9.i8.107
Do adjunctive art therapies reduce symptomatology in schizophrenia? A meta-analysis
Keith R Laws, William Conway, School of Life and Medical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield AL10 9AB, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Laws KR designed the study, checked all searches and re-ran all analyses; Conway W conducted initial searches and analyses; Laws KR and Conway W wrote the paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Keith R Laws, BSc, PhD, Full Professor, School of Life and Medical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield Campus, Hatfield AL10 9AB, United Kingdom. k.laws@herts.ac.uk
Telephone: +44-1707-281137
Received: June 3, 2019
Peer-review started: June 4, 2019
First decision: August 2, 2019
Revised: September 3, 2019
Accepted: October 14, 2019
Article in press: October 14, 2019
Published online: December 19, 2019
Peer-review started: June 4, 2019
First decision: August 2, 2019
Revised: September 3, 2019
Accepted: October 14, 2019
Article in press: October 14, 2019
Published online: December 19, 2019
Core Tip
Core tip: This meta-analysis examines data from randomised controlled trials looking at whether art therapies reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia-particularly negative symptoms. Our study indicates that art therapies do not significantly reduce total symptoms or positive symptoms. While we found a "small" therapeutic effect on negative symptoms, the effect appears to reflect two forms of bias-first, no effect emerges when trials use blind outcome assessment; second, the trials also point to the possibility of publication bias.