Children's art as a helpful index of anxiety and self-esteem with plastic surgery.

Abstract

Children often cannot adequately express their feelings about physical issues that may be affecting them emotionally. Nonverbal communication with art has been a time-tested tool in understanding and interpreting the feelings of children under stress. For 27 years, the author has used art as a helpful index of anxiety and self-esteem in children undergoing plastic surgery for congenital, traumatic, and aesthetic problems. A child psychiatrist and an art therapist evaluated 200 drawings. The evaluations corroborated the need to "listen" to our patients no matter what their size.