The Practical Application of Oil Painting in the Treatment of Mental Illness.

The supplied publication type says this is a Retracted Publication, so the reported findings should not be used to guide care. The participant numbers do not match: the paper says 43 inpatients and 59 controls, then analyses 10 treatment and 10 control members. The paper says it used a randomized control group experiment, but it does not report how participants were randomised, how allocation was concealed, or whether outcome assessors were blinded. The control group is described as normal controls from the same area, but the paper does not clearly say what the control group received. The exclusion criteria include major depressive disorder and recurrent depressive disorder, while the study says the case group was from depression inpatients. The outcome scales are not named or explained, and percentage decreases are given without the scale range. The treatment was a multi-component group programme with oil painting, therapist guidance, discussion, and social work narrative, so the contribution of any single component cannot be separated. The paper reports significant symptom reductions but also reports no significant group difference or interaction for persistence.

The supplied text does not report funding or conflicts of interest. The publication type says this is a Retracted Publication.

Do not use the reported reductions in depression and anxiety scores as evidence that oil painting therapy works. The article is retracted, the participant numbers and control condition are inconsistent, and the treatment was a multi-component group programme, so no single component can be credited.