Browsing by Author "Hakalax, Heidi"

The aim of this study was to examine what kind of therapeutic effects the crafts have and how the crafts are used in therapy and as a therapeutic tool. Another aim of this study was to investigate and analyse what kind of therapeutic outcomes doing crafts may lead to. The research questions utilized in this study were: 1. How are crafts used as therapy and therapeutic activity? 2. What kind of therapeutic effects does the literature have on crafts? Previous studies have shown that crafts have a positive impact on overall well-being. Doing crafts has been stated to reduce stress and improve life management. Studies have found crafts to ease feelings of pain or grief, and therefore not letting the negative emotions dominate life of an individual. According to the studies, doing crafts allow an individual to pass all the negative emotions for a moment to be processed later during more suitable timing. Based on research on the subject, crafts have been identified as one of the tools to increase well-being and quality of life. Crafts can be used as a therapy or as a part of therapy. In this study, literature is used to describe how crafts are used in therapy and as form of a therapy and what therapeutic effects crafts have. The research was carried out as a descriptive literature review. The research material was collected in spring 2019 from the Helka library and Ethes database. Earlier studies and published articles on the subject were utilized as references. The material was reviewed, and answers were provided to the research questions. According to the literature review, crafts were used both as a therapy and as a therapeutic tool. By making crafts, the makers felt that things in life could be influenced and that crafts get to the makers a way to escape to their own world, with their own thoughts and feelings. Crafts also helped them to become aware of themselves. Crafts seemed to have an influence on the mind, emotions and cognitive skills comprehensively. A positive impact on life management and quality of life was also detected on this study.