Art Therapy: A Complementary Treatment for Mental Disorders.

Art therapy, as a non-pharmacological medical complementary and alternative therapy, has been used as one of medical interventions with good clinical effects on mental disorders. However, systematically reviewed in detail in clinical situations is lacking. Here, we searched on PubMed for art therapy in an attempt to explore its theoretical basis, clinical applications, and future perspectives to summary its global pictures. Since drawings and paintings have been historically recognized as a useful part of therapeutic processes in art therapy, we focused on studies of art therapy which mainly includes painting and drawing as media. As a result, a total of 413 literature were identified. After carefully reading full articles, we found that art therapy has been gradually and successfully used for patients with mental disorders with positive outcomes, mainly reducing suffering from mental symptoms. These disorders mainly include depression disorders and anxiety, cognitive impairment and dementias, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and autism. These findings suggest that art therapy can not only be served as an useful therapeutic method to assist patients to open up and share their feelings, views, and experiences, but also as an auxiliary treatment for diagnosing diseases to help medical specialists obtain complementary information different from conventional tests. We humbly believe that art therapy has great potential in clinical applications on mental disorders to be further explored.

[Label identities and basic situation of health food in Changsha].

OBJECTIVE: To study the relevant information on the label of health food in Changsha, and provide scientific evidence for health food hygienic supervision. METHODS: Investigation was conducted in department stores, supermarkets, pharmacies, and wholesale markets in the 5 districts in Changsha with multistage stratified sampling method. Self designed basic information of health food questionnaire was used to investigate the quality of labels the health food products. RESULTS: Among the 408 random samples, the unidentified rates of label items were ranked in descending order: functional components (49.8%), unsuited community (27.9%), manufacturing date (23.0%), approval number and others (9.6%). The qualified rates of labels were different in different management types (χ(2)=59.793, P<0.05): the highest rate was in supermarkets (71.15%), followed by pharmacies (70.07%), shopping malls (57.47%), and wholesale markets (26.23%). CONCLUSION: The supervision of label identities of health food should be strengthened, especially for the health food in the wholesale markets.