First Reflection:

I saw the Extended Essay as an opportunity to combine two disciplines: Visual Art and Psychology, my most preferred subjects. I have known about Art Therapy for awhile now and this seemed to be the opportunity to feed my curiosity regarding it. Art Therapy is important to me primarily because I have experienced its healing powers first hand. The essay is a combination of Visual Arts and Psychology but I will look at it from psychological perspective.
The disorder I was most curious about was Depression and hence I decided to go with it. But upon researching, I realized that there are not enough resources to write an Extended Essay about. So I researched for other disorders that are cured by Art Therapy. I had a difficult time narrowing down between autism, schizophrenia, and PTSD. I then decided on PTSD because a symptom of PTSD is Depression which would mean that the time I spent on researching for Depression would not be a waste and that knowledge can help form the body of my essay.

Second Reflection:

I think my research was successful. I found some amazing and reliable sources to form the body of my essay. While I was researching for Depression, I did have some books and magazines in mind which I would read but after it changed to PTSD, there were no such options available. Therefore, I was confined to whatever the web could provide me with. I learned that researching can be fun if you know where to find the content. From listening to my teachers’ and peers’ advice I began my research from websites like scholar.google.com or the British Council library, but they did not have what I needed. I was very demotivated in the beginning because I couldn’t find any material for the essay. But, I just looked up on google and some useful research papers came up. And to further the research, I looked up the sources they had mentioned in their bibliography and thus was my research carried out efficiently. Considering the subject, my knowledge has greatly increased. Also, I could find applications for what I had learned in our classes and that made the research more engaging for me.

Third Reflection:

While I was researching, I realized that a lot of questions are unanswered in this field. So, if I were to undertake this research again I would do it 10 years later when we have substantially more knowledge than we have now. Also, a lot of sources were paid. So, the next time I take up the research, I would ensure I have money to spend on it. An approach that could make the research interesting is the two hypothesis which are countering each other, so one where Art therapy works and where it does not. I could not do it now simply because there were no evidences of Art therapy not working. I think this would have added a lot more credibility to research owing to that it can be falsified.