ABSTRACT
Background: Despite art therapy has been widely used in cancer population to improve their physical and mental health, painting therapy, as one form of art therapy, is seldom applied to adult cancer patients independently. Therefore, how painting therapy affects adult cancer patients’ health outcomes needed to be explored sufficiently. Objectives: The purpose of this review was to assess and synthesize the latest evidence of painting therapy concerning adult cancer patients, and to provide some inspiration for clinical staff. Methods: A literature research of PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsychoInfo, Psydex, CENTRAL, Google Scholar, British Library, CNKI, Wanfang, CQVIP electronic databases were undertaken with the following key words: art therapy, painting, drawing, cancer, neoplasm, tumor, carcinoma and oncology. A narrative synthesis was used according to PRISMA and the quality of study was assessed using acritical assessment tool. Results: Eleven papers reporting nine different research projects met the inclusion criteria. Generally speaking, painting therapy positively affected health outcomes. The impacts on patients include improvements in quality of life, coping with disease, mental health and somatic symptoms. However, inconsistency still exists. Three studies failed to show positive effects of painting therapy on post-traumatic growth, distress and coping behavior in participants. Conclusion: Robust evidence was found in rehabilitation of patients with various types of cancer. Painting therapy evidently affected cancer patients in a positive direction. However, the application of painting therapy to cancer patients needs to be explored further due to few studies on this topic.