The Effect of Art Therapy on Total Laryngectomy Patients

Total laryngectomy (TL) patients suffer from a myriad of psychological and physiological difficulties following surgery. One of their main difficulties in communication due to problems in speaking. Art therapy offers an alternative means of communication via visual art making and has been shown to reduce psychological distress in cancer patients. Thus the goal of our study is to examine the effect of participating in a group art therapy session on the psychological and physical well being of TL patients. Our design is a quasi-experimental qualitative study with a pre-post design, collecting data with validated questionnaires and self-reports of the participants.