A Report On Traumatised and Non Traumatised Children’s Human Figure Drawings Reflecting Emotional Effects of Disastrous Conditions

The Australasian Journal of Disaster
and Trauma Studies
ISSN:  1174-4707
Volume : 2009-1

A Report On Traumatised and Non Traumatised
Children’s Human Figure Drawings
Reflecting Emotional Effects of Disastrous Conditions

Elif Celebi Oncu Division of Preschool Education, Faculty of Education, University of Kocaeli, Izmit, Turkey

Berrin Akman & Tulin Guler Division of Preschool Education, Faculty of Education, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey

Tugba Karaaslan Department of Child Health Service, Hospital of Medicine Faculty, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey

Abstract

A Report On Traumatised and Non Traumatised
Children’s Human Figure Drawings
Reflecting Emotional Effects of Disastrous Conditions

Introduction

Drawings are seen as a reflection of a child’s inner world (DiLeo, 1983; Golomb, 2003) and human figure drawings (HFD) are used to assess what many researchers and clinicians determine are emotional or pyschological problems involving children (Koppitz, 1984, DiLeo, 1983). As drawings are assumed to give indications about children’s character and state (Koppitz, 1984, Golomb, 2003), we can gather some evidence about a child’s emotional state and problems and make conclusive facts. Young children do not easily speak about the traumatic occurrence, recent experience has been that many young children basically give graphic accounts of their experiences and were also able to reveal how distressful re-experiencing this imagery affected them (Yule, 2001).

According to Denham (1998), emotions are important because they provide social information for others. Emotions and facial expressions could be a concrete base of nonverbal communication (social interaction). Human beings reflect their feelings and emotions usually with facial expressions. Sometimes it can be difficult for some children to express or speak about their feelings. In situations like these, we should encourage the child to draw a picture. After drawing we should also ask him/her to speak about the events surfacing portrayal speak about their demeanor.

In recent years we have encountered earthquakes in Turkey especially after the 17th of August and 12th of November. On the 17^th of August, a 7.4 Richter magnitude earthquake occured in Golcuk, Kocaeli and affected the neighbouring provinces of Yalova, Istanbul, Sakarya, Bursa, Bolu, and Eskisehir. Approximately three months after this devastating disaster, another earthquake registering 7.2 with the epicentre in the town of Kaynasli, Duzce struck on the 12^th of November. Both of the earthquakes were absolutely devastating with painful and stressful days afterwards for all the residents living in the disaster areas. According to the official records and UNICEF, seventeen thousand one hundred (17.100) bodies were recovered from this destructive tragedy destruction along with forty-four thousand injured. The effects of the destruction were amplified with the rupturing of the infrastructure where roads and railways became impassable, water and sewage was non-existent and the electricity grid no longer functioned. Vast studies and research was conducted concerning effects and disorders after the disaster (Kilic, Aydin, Taskintuna, Ozcurumez, Kurt, Eren, Lale, Ozel and Zileli, 2006; Bulut, Bulut and Tayli, 2005; Basoglu, Salcioglu and Livaoglu, 2002). Recent research about disasters indicated that children have been seriously effected by natural disasters especially when they occur unexpectedly (Gurwitch, et al, 2002; Monahon, 1997; Durkin et al., 1993). Stressful and unexpected events like disasters, accidents or death will effect all people’s moods directly, especially children’s (Durkin et al,1993; Monahon, 1997; Mercuri ve Angelique, 2004) and can cause traumas (Jones et al., 2001; Azarian and Skriptchenko-Gregorian, 1998, Yule, 2001). Traumatised children or children who have had different emotional problems have difficulty in expressing themselves. Through play and drawing traumatised or emotionally disturbed children can reflect their anger, fear, desperation (Veltman and Browne, 2002; Gray-Deering, 2000) and they can do this in a secure and relieving aspect (Malchiodi, 2001). According to Koppitz (1984) and Cox (1986), there are developmental and individual differences in children’s drawings, and through drawing children can reveal their problems, inner thoughts or traumatic events which effect their daily activity. Effects of disasters and perception of traumatised events can differ from child to child. Factors like age, gender, education and personality of children can effect the degree of the trauma. Previous research about disasters have shown that traumatised children displayed problems of emotional and behavioral disturbances like flaring tempers phobias, anxiety, sleep and eating disorders and enuresis (Durkin et al, 1993; Azarian and Skripchenko-Gregorian, 1998; Gurwitch et al, 2002). Results of a previous research about children’s drawings after the Marmara disaster showed that drawings of children included dark colours like black and brown and were depicting the disaster scene including graves of beloved parents or siblings (Celebi-Oncu and Karaaslan, 2002). The present study was intended to expose how six year olds reflect different emotional expressions in their HFDs and to interpret the important points of the HFDs.

Method

Participants
64 six year olds children from preschools in Golcuk, Bolu and Ankara were selected as subjects for the study. 27 children, constituting the traumatised group, (10 females, 17 males) were chosen from the tents and prefabricated container city preschools constructed after the earthquake and 37 nontraumatised children (22 males, 15 females) were selected from a preschool in Ankara.

Materials
A collection of oil pastels (red, blue, yellow, green, orange, pink, purple, brown, white and black) and A4 paper were used by the children. The HFDs were analyzed according to Koppitz Emotional Indicator Checklist (Koppitz, 1984).

Procedure
Children were taken individually into a room with a researcher during the first phase each child was questioned about what it meant to be happy/sad/scared/angry and surprised. The answers were recorded on a document. After the questions, the researcher showed emotional expressions (happy, sad, angry, scared and suprised) depicted on 20x20 cm. cards (see Figure1) and asked the child to state the emotions and to tell why the face on the card was indicative like that. At last the researcher gave the child A4 paper and oil pastels and asked him/her to draw a happy person. When the child completed his/her drawing, s/he was asked to tell the story of the jovial person drawn on the paper.

Results

As shown in Table 1, there are significant differences between the drawings of traumatized children and nontraumatised children. Generally children who had experienced disaster drew tiny figures more than the nontraumatised children. Also we can see a remarkable increase in the drawing of teeth in the angry figure drawing (n=14, 51.8%, p=0.01).

Table 2. Frequencies of Using of Colours According to Emotions

*p<0.05 is signficant

Colour Preferences According to Emotions
Table 2 shows the percentage of children’s using of colours according to emotions. The results were significantly remarkable. The drawings indicated that the traumatised group of children did not prefer to draw colourful figures instead most of the children who experienced disaster preferred to use only one colour like black, brown, green and red in their drawings. On the other hand it’s noted that nontraumatised children preferred to draw more colourful figures.

Drawing of Emotions
Table 3 represents the percentage of reflection of emotions in HFDs. The drawings indicated that in both groups children tended to draw HFDs reflecting emotions.

Table 3: Frequencies and Percentages of Reflection of Emotions in HFDs

As shown in Table 3, it was concluded that in both groups, most of the children tended to reflect the emotions in their drawings, but nontraumatised children reflected the emotions better than the traumatised children. No statistical differences were observed. Traumatised children could have reflected the emotion of surprise in their drawings more than the other facial expressions (n= 24, 88.9%). On the other hand nontraumatised children’s angry person drawings were more recognizable than the other emotions (n=35, 94.6 %).

Emotional Stories About Drawings
When asked about the stories of the emotional drawings, traumatised children’s answers were crucial. Most of the children told stories about the events they had experienced especially when they were asked to draw figures reflecting negative emotions. In the drawings of the scared, most of the traumatised children (%67) indicated that the person or child in the drawing was scared because of the disaster, or because of being lonely, or afraid to lose his/her family, or house. In the drawings reflecting other negative emotions like anger and sadness, children again told stories about the disaster. The stories were like that: “This child in the drawing is angry, because she lost her sister in the disaster.” Or “the person here had lost his house so he’s angry because he has to live in a tent.” “This person is crying and so sad because she had no relatives remaining.” Children’s stories about surprise was also related to disaster like; “the boy is surprised to see his injured friend.” “This is a surprised person. She is surprised to see destroyed buildings”. “This child is scared to see another earthquake sooner again”.On the otherside the children who had not experienced disaster told stories about their desires like being happy to have a new toy or being sad or angry for losing a toy or a pet, being scared of darkness, a thief or monsters, being surprised for celebrating a birthday party or for going somewhere with parents etc...

Discussion

According to Koppitz (1984); “tiny figure” and “omission of mouth” in the human figure drawings are assumed to reflect shyness and timidity, “hands cut off” criteria is assumed to reflect insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. Drawings of “teeth” in HFDs are seen as a sign of aggresiveness, “legs pressed together” criteria is assumed to reflect the feeling of insecurity, anxiety and concern over a sexual trauma (Koppitz 1984).

All of these feelings reflected in the emotional HFDs are assumed as a result of the disaster, as unexpectedly occurring traumatic events like disasters are difficult to cope with for children (Durkin et al, 1993; Monahon, 1997) and after a disaster children could feel anxiety, fear, anger, sadness and hate (Gurwitch et al., 2002). In a study about childhood posttraumatic stress disorder after Hurricane Floyd represented that children clearly demonstrated the devastating effect of a natural disaster (Russoniello, Skalko, O’Brien, McGhee, Bingham-Alexander and Beatley, 2002).

The drawings indicated that the traumatised group of children did not prefer to draw colourful figures instead most of the children who experienced disaster preferred to use only one colour like black, brown, green and red in their drawings. On the other hand it’s observed that nontraumatised children preferred to draw more colourful figures. As Burkitt and Newell (2005) stressed; it has not been extensively researched the general relationship between colour preferences and colour use in children’s drawings of figures, but on the otherhand both size and colour in children’s drawings have been regarded by researchers as having emotional significance (Golomb, 1992; Kopitz, 1984). Children’s drawings have been seen as a resource for children to express their feelings about people and events in their lives (Golomb, 1992; Koppitz, 1984; Burkitt, Barnett and Davis, 2004). So colour preference in the HFDs of children could give us some evidence about the children’s feelings or emotional state about the drawing. According to Burkitt and Newell (2005), research had shown that children tend to associate a negative emotion with darker colours like black and brown. It was also noted in numerous studies that stressful events effected the increase in the HFDs (Sturner et al., 1980; Hibbard and Hartman, 1990). In traumatised children’s drawings it was seen that most of the children drew “tiny figures”. Tiny figures were seen to reflect insecurity, withdrawal and depression (Koppitz, 1984). The results of research about orphan children’s HFDs represented that all the orphans tended to draw tiny figures (Celebi, Darica, 2000). Research about HFDs of sexually victimized and non abused children showed that sexually victimized children demonstrated anxiety more often than did drawings from other comparative groups (Hibbard and Hartman, 1990). The present results are consistent with research that identified minor differences when appropriate control samples were chosen.

In the existence of an traumatic event, preschool children have shown more regressive behaviour as well as more anti-social, aggressive and destructive behaviour, also most children became more irritable and angry (Yule, 2001).

The present study represented that in both groups most of the children tended to reflect the emotions in their drawings. Results of the studies about children’s recognition of facial expressions demonstrated that children’s reliability of emotions from facial expressions matures during preschool and school years (Camras and Alison, 1985; Boyatzis, Cazan and Ting, 1993).

Golomb (1992), investigated emotional expressions of free HFDs in primary school children. Children were asked to draw a happy, sad and angry child. She reported that children used lips to express emotion in their drawings. Also in another study of children’s drawings of emotional faces, it was found that preschool children succeeded in drawing proper mouths to happy, sad, angry and surprised emotions (Sayil, 2001).

Children also reflected their thoughts about the events in the stories about their drawings. Storytelling is also another technique for identifying the problems. This research showed that children were effected from the events occurring or the scenes about the events easily.

Overall, results of this research showed that there is a minimum, but not statistically significant, difference between children who had experienced a traumatic event like disaster and those who did not. Traumatised children seem to draw mostly tiny figures and didn’t want to draw colourful figures. HFDs can give us clues about a child’s emotional state, but results of this research suggest that for further tests should not use only this assesment determiner. It has been reported by most of the researchers that HFDs gave clues about the child’s inner world and mood state, but the HFDs should not be the sole factor for assessment (Burkitt, Barrett and Davis, 2005; Veltman and Browne, 2002). As Malchiodi (2001) stressed; “drawing is a natural language for children and especially for the child who has been traumatised or experienced a significant loss.” We can see in the present research that children who experienced the earthquake reflected the emotions of sadness, anger and fear in their HFDs. Research about children’s drawings of traumatic and painful events like war showed that children could reflect the traumatic effect of the event in their drawings (Moreno, 2000; Tanay, 1994).

Implications

The present research provides some evidence about traumatised children’s figure drawings reflecting emotions. As stressed earlier, traumatised children tend to feel anger and anxiety and also can be concerned for themselves and their environment (Monahon, 1997; Durkin et al, 1993). That indicators of such problems could manifest themselves in the figure drawings and so drawings can be used as a screening component, but it should be noted that HFDs should not be used as an assessment tool, for clinicians and educators in identifying areas of importance. It’s also imperative for educators and clinicians to ask children about the stories of their drawings. By that way educators and clinicians can give children emotional support when it is necessary. But the results of the present research gives us minor evidence about the mood state of the children who had experienced an earthquake, because of the number of subjects were very minute and because of using only HFDs for the assesment, the results of the study are not necessarily valid. So it’s also suggested that for further research, multiple measures have to be extended such as HFDs, checklists of state of emotions and checklists or scales of fear or anxiety.

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