Investigating the effect of painting therapy on alexithymia and emotional suppression in high school students

Emotional growth is one of the most important and undeniable factors in the all-round progress of students that has been considered by most educators and officials in recent years; However, there are not many effective and practical strategies to improve this issue and it still faces ambiguities. So, the purpose of this study was to investigating the effect of painting therapy on alexithymia and emotional suppression in female students. The statistical population of the present research is all female students in second grade of high school that were selected through available sampling. The research design was semi-experimental of pre- and post-test with control group. Regarding the research design, the sample volume was selected 30 people, 15 people were assigned in the experimental group and 15 people in the control group. The painting therapy program was performed in 8 sessions and each session lasted for 45 minutes. The research instruments included Toronto alexithymia questionnaire and emotional suppression questionnaire. The method of data analysis was MANCOVA. Findings showed that painting therapy is significantly effective on alexithymia. Also, the results showed that painting therapy is significantly effective on emotional suppression in female students.