A participatory arts program to support the well-being and psychosocial adjustment of adolescents and young adults living with mental health issues: investigating factors associated with differential change following participation

Abstract

Abstract Growing evidence suggests that participatory arts programs (PAPs) may represent acceptable and promising avenues to help limit the impacts of mental disorders on the psychosocial functioning and developmental trajectories of young people. In this naturalistic evaluation study, we measured the subjective well-being, global self-esteem, and perceived social functioning of 171 adolescents and young adults before and after their participation in a PAP especially developed to foster their psychosocial adjustment and well-being. We assessed the pre-post-program evolution of these three dimensions and investigated its variation as a function of participants’ demographic and clinical characteristics. Globally, all three psychosocial adjustment dimensions improved significantly from pre- to post-program (p ≤ 0.001). Their evolution did not vary according to the age, gender, or migration status of participants, but did as a function of their geographical setting and severity of functional impairments due to mental health problems. Improvements in self-esteem and social functioning were observed in participants living in rural or semi-rural regions (p < 0.001), but not in the metropolitan area. Youths reporting severe impairments had the greatest improvements in all three dimensions of psychosocial functioning (p < 0.001), followed by those reporting moderate impairments (p < 0.001), and no changes were observed in the low severity sub-group. Results suggest that participatory arts programs can foster the well-being and psychosocial functioning of transition-aged youths with varied mental health issues, while emphasizing the importance to consider participants’ characteristics in evaluation research.