• 한국노년학
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.259-275
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to check if group art therapy is effective in improving self esteem and self integrity of rural elderly women. Study subjects are forty seven rural elderly women in A-city who have participated in producing specialized products in their rural area. They are divided into experimental group (EG, n=25) who wish to participate in the group art therapy program, a part of the A-city sponsored program named 'Making the Rural Elderly Happy', to improve and enhance the elderly's self esteem and self integrity, and control group (CG, n=22) with no wish to participate. However, only forty four elderly women are selected as the final study subjects for data analysis, due to those who either missed the program session more than once or died of old age during the program period. The group art therapy program was given from March 16 to May 18 of 2010, every Tuesday between 1pm through 3pm for a total of 12 sessions, with the help of two college student assistants in the region and one staff member for the city program. SPSS WIN version 12.0 is adopted to evaluate and analyze the effects of the therapy program, independent t-test for equivalence check of pretests, and frequency check for general characteristics of each group. The study results are obtained by the mean and standard deviation to grasp the changes between pretest and post-test on both groups, together with ANCOVA to evaluate effects of the therapy program with the pre-test as covariant. The results are as follows. First, self esteem of EG is significantly improved than that of CG after intervention of group art therapy. Second, self integrity is significantly higher in EG than CG after the group art therapy intervention. Therefore, it can be claimed that group art therapy is effective in improving and enhancing self esteem and self integrity of the rural elderly women.