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Friday July 13 1:21 PM ET

Children's Drawings Said to Reveal Mental State

By Pat Hagan

LONDON (Reuters Health) -

Young children's drawings may contain vital clues to their mental state and could even be used by psychiatrists in psychological assessments of troubled youngsters, UK researchers report.

The investigators studied the way children with behavioural disorders drew pictures of family groups and single figures and found important differences from drawings by ``healthy'' children of the same age.

Those with psychological problems were more likely to draw bodies with parts missing and their sketches tended to be more bizarre in nature. The more bizarre the picture, the more severe was the child's condition, researchers say.

``These were pictures where the hands, arms or legs were left off,'' Dr. Jonathan Green, senior lecturer in child psychiatry at the University of Manchester and lead author of the study, told Reuters Health.

``This is not because of an inability to draw, because we controlled for age and gender. Why this difference should exist is a matter of interpretation but it probably has to do with the fact that when a child draws a picture of their concept of the family, it's an idea that's represented,'' Green explained.

``The more distressed and upset a child is, the more this idea gets muddled. It's common for these children to suppress bits of information or glide over them,'' Green said.

The findings emerged from three separate studies involving children who were being treated for conduct disorder.

The first, involving a group of 5- to 7-year-olds, used three separate indicators--size, position and omission of body parts--to assess the drawings and also looked at the mood of the picture.

The group with behavioural problems were more likely than another group of healthy youngsters to leave off parts of the body, draw bizarre pictures and have a higher overall score in terms of weird or unusual features.

In the second study, a wider range of indicators were used on a similar group of children and the ``codings'' that resulted were measured against psychiatric disturbance in the children. Again, there was a clear link between the drawings and mental state.

The final study, involving 52 healthy children and 33 suffering conduct disorder, produced similar results.

Green told Reuters Health the findings, which he presented at the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London, confirm existing evidence that drawings produced by young children contain crucial pointers to mental well-being.

``Drawings are quite commonly used in assessing children, but the basis on which this is done is pretty ad hoc,'' he said. ''The purpose of these studies was to put it on a more empirical basis. Kids like to draw at a young age and often find it easier than talking.

``So these drawings can provide a marker for their mental state and how disturbed they really are,'' he said. ``And they are very different from older kids' drawings because older children are more hung up on what the external world thinks about them.''