EFFECTIVENESS OF GROUP POETRY THERAPY ON EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION IN PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Objective: Many people with schizophrenia or schizophrenia-like illnesses continue to experience symptoms in spite of medication. Creative therapies such as poem therapy may be helpful in these cases. Thus, an experiment has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of group poetry therapy on emotional expression in chronic schizophrenia spectrum patients. Methods: This research was an experimental study that used pre-test, post-test with control group design. The population was consisted of all schizophrenia patients who were kept in Daroshafa clinic in Ardabil. Twenty-two patients with chronic schizophrenia were randomly selected from a clinic. These patients were divided into two groups. Poetry therapy was carried on an experimental group for 11 weeks, and another group did not receive any therapy. Emotional expression was measured through Persian version of Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire, and data were analyzed using analysis of covariance on SPSS-18. Results: It has been shown that negative expressivity (NE) and impulse strength (IS) were significantly diminished and positive expressivity (PE) was significantly enhanced in an intervention group, but these parameters did not change significantly in the control group at the end of trial. Conclusion: The use of poetry as an intervention technique played a significant role in reducing NE and IS, and enhancing PE. These findings confirm previous research. Results are discussed in terms of the viability of poetry as a possible therapeutic method in emotional dysfunction and related disorders.