Concentration: Medical Humanities and Ethics

Project Mentor: Gabor Keitner MD

Graduation Year: MD 2010

Concentration Title:
The Effects of Spontaneous Creative Expression on Anxiety and Depression in Psychiatric Inpatients

Concentration Description:
My concentration work began the summer after my first year of medical school, I worked with Dr. Gabor Keitner to develop and get IRB approval for a project entitled the Effects of Spontaneous Creative Expression on Anxiety and Depression in Psychiatric Inpatients. The project involved administering the Beck Anxiety Inventory and Beck Depression Inventory to 35 psychiatric inpatients prior o their participation in a spontaneous creative activity for thirty minutes, and then e-administered the inventories after. I also administered the inventories to 15 control patients pre and post participation in a non creative activity for thirty minutes, and 15 control patients who did not participate in any type of activity. I continued data collection throughout the fall of my second year, along with participating in a seminar based around pain- in which we read different excerpts from books, articles, and and had various speakers come in and lead discussions about this subject and the literature we had read.