Hotspots, trends, and advice: a 10-year visualization-based analysis of painting therapy from a scientometric perspective

Qianrong Liang; Jiarong Ye; Yingyin Lu; Junjie Dong; Heyong Shen; Hongzhong Qiu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1148391

Hotspots, trends, and advice: a 10-year visualization-based analysis of painting therapy from a scientometric perspective

Front Psychol. 2023 May 22:14:1148391. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1148391. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Qianrong Liang^{1

2}, Jiarong Ye³, Yingyin Lu⁴, Junjie Dong^{1

2}, Heyong Shen^{1

2}, Hongzhong Qiu²

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
² School of Public Health and Management, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China.
³ Institute of Analytical Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, City University of Macau, Macau, China.
⁴ School of Finance, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangdong, China.

Abstract

Purpose: Research on painting therapy is available worldwide and painting therapy is widely applied as a psychological therapy in different fields with diverse clients. As an evidence-based psychotherapy, previous studies have revealed that painting therapy has favorable therapeutic effects. However, limited studies on painting therapy used universal data to assemble in-depth evidence to propose a better recommendation on it for the future use. Large-scale retrospective studies that used bibliometric methodology are lacking. Therefore, this study presented a broad view of painting therapy and provided an intensively analytical insight into the structure of knowledge regarding painting therapy employing bibliometric analysis of articles. CiteSpace software was used to evaluate scientific research on painting therapy globally published from January 2011 to July 2022.

Methods: Publications related to painting therapy from 2011 to 2022 were searched using the Web of Science database. This study employed bibliometric techniques to perform co-citation analysis of authors, visualize collaborations between countries/regions as network maps, and analyze keywords and subjects relevant to painting therapy by using CiteSpace software.

Results: In total, 871 articles met the inclusion criteria. We found that the number of painting therapy publications generally trended incrementally. The United States and United Kingdom made the most contributions to painting therapy research and had the greatest impact on the practical application in other countries. Arts in Psychotherapy and Frontiers in Psychology occupied key publishing positions in this research field. The application groups were mainly children, adolescents, and females, and Western countries paid high attention to painting therapy. The main areas of application of painting therapy were Alzheimer's disease and other psychosomatic disease fields. Identified research priorities for painting therapy were emotion regulation and mood disorder treatment, personality disorder treatment, personal self-esteem enhancement, and medical humanistic care. Three keywords, "depression," "women," and "recovery," had the strongest citation bursts, which emphasized the research trends.

Conclusion: The general trend for painting therapy research is positive. Our findings provide useful information for researchers on painting therapy to determine new directions in relate to popular issues, collaborators, and research frontiers. Painting therapy holds a promising future, and further studies could explore the clinical implications of this therapy in terms of mechanisms and criteria for assessing efficacy.

Keywords: CiteSpace; Web of Science; bibliometrics; painting therapy; psychosomatic health.

Publication types

Review