NCT06789666

Digital Art Therapy for Young Cancer Survivors

Feasibility of a Digital Art Therapy Application Designed to Improve Quality of Life in Young Cancer Survivors

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 15 (estimated)
• Sponsor: UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 25 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

This is a single-site, single-arm, interventional study assessing the feasibility of the ARTCan Therapy Application (App) and whether it is an acceptable means of administering art therapy to young adult cancer survivors. The ARTCan Therapy App guides participants through a 6-week digital art therapy program. Subjects will participate in weekly art therapy prompts guided by the app and will complete weekly mental health quality of life (MHQoL) surveys during the intervention. In addition, baseline and end-of-intervention patient-reported outcome measures (PROMIS-DSF8a) and an acceptability survey will be administered. The hypothesis is that digital art therapy is feasible for young adult cancer survivors with self-reported mood issues and is an acceptable means of administering art therapy in the patient population.

Detailed description

The ARTCan application has been designed to define therapy strategies for the care of patients; it emerges from a unique collaboration in the disciplines of design, art, art therapy, and medicine from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and the School of Medicine, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The relevance of the application design was to enable the trans-disciplinary team to experiment with proof of the following concepts: 1) technology-based tools and feasibility studies for new lines of research in treatment; 2) research that embraces intellectual diversity by merging the creative disciplines; and 3) addressing issues of health and well-being of patients. This study is testing whether the digital art therapy application "Art Therapy Can Do" (ARTCan) is a feasible means of administering art therapy to young cancer survivors. The study is funded by the Ian's Friends Foundation and the Weatherspoon Foundation.

Conditions

• Cancer
• Pediatric Cancer
• Pediatric Malignancies
• Pediatric Sarcoma of Soft Tissue
• Adolescent and Young Adult With Brain Cancer

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	ARTCan App	The ARTCan App is an art therapy technology application program. The application can be accessed via the web (via computer, phone, or on a device such as an iPad). With the use of the application, participants complete weekly sessions that culminate in an "art" piece. Note that participants are not required to have expertise in drawing; developing art skills or assessing the quality of art pieces is not the focus of the ARTCan program. Subjects will upload a photo of the art they created to this application to show proof of completion of art therapy. They will also answer questions specific to the art therapy theme for the week.

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-04-07
• Primary completion: 2027-04-01
• Completion: 2027-04-01
• First posted: 2025-01-23
• Last updated: 2025-09-16

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States