Effects of Art and Movement Training for Aggression in Orphans in a Government-funded institutional Home

Background: The number of orphans in India is so massive that their basic needs are rarely met. The budget allotment for orphans is meagre and their psycho-social needs are neglected. In addition to this, they sometimes come out from difficult and traumatic situations and the resources are not enough to alleviate the distress that comes out of their emotional dysregulation. This can sometimes channelize into aggressive behaviour which gets difficult to understand in such set ups. Objective: This study aims to see the effects of art and movement training techniques on aggression in orphan children. Participants and setting: A pre-test post-test experimental design was adopted with two different samples of 40 and 34 orphan children each, between the age group of 11-17 in a government-funded institutional home in Haldia, West Bengal. Methods: The RPQ was used as a screening tool to help select moderately and highly aggressive children and to collect scores for further comparison. The intervention was for 7 days and the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ) developed by Adrian Raine and Kenneth Dodge was administered for the two groups, once before and once after the intervention. The two groups had orphan children exposed to art and movement techniques and no exposure respectively. Results: Based on the results, the overall aggression was reduced for the experimental group due to the intervention. The Wilcoxon test p value for the whole group is very close to 0.05 which may signify some effect of the intervention. The experimental group showed reduced scores of proactive aggressions but there was no difference in the reactive aggression scores after the intervention. Conclusions: The results of the study imply that proactive aggression can be managed and therapeutic arts is a good tool for the reduction of such behaviours. It opens a door for more such research on aggression, therapeutic arts and acting upon the need of orphans.