Research on painting therapy is available worldwide and painting therapy is widely applied as a psychological therapy in different fields with diverse clients. As an evidence-based psychotherapy, previous studies have revealed that painting therapy has favorable therapeutic effects. However, limited studies on painting therapy used universal data to assemble in-depth evidence to propose a better recommendation on it for the future use. Large-scale retrospective studies that used bibliometric methodology are lacking. Therefore, this study presented a broad view of painting therapy and provided an intensively analytical insight into the structure of knowledge regarding painting therapy employing bibliometric analysis of articles. CiteSpace software was used to evaluate scientific research on painting therapy globally published from January 2011 to July 2022.
Publications related to painting therapy from 2011 to 2022 were searched using the Web of Science database. This study employed bibliometric techniques to perform co-citation analysis of authors, visualize collaborations between countries/regions as network maps, and analyze keywords and subjects relevant to painting therapy by using CiteSpace software.
In total, 871 articles met the inclusion criteria. We found that the number of painting therapy publications generally trended incrementally. The United States and United Kingdom made the most contributions to painting therapy research and had the greatest impact on the practical application in other countries.
The general trend for painting therapy research is positive. Our findings provide useful information for researchers on painting therapy to determine new directions in relate to popular issues, collaborators, and research frontiers. Painting therapy holds a promising future, and further studies could explore the clinical implications of this therapy in terms of mechanisms and criteria for assessing efficacy.