Calligraphy therapy: A complementary approach to psychotherapy

Abstract

Three decades of theory-based research has established the effectiveness of Chinese calligraphic handwriting (CCH) in causing cognitive activation, physiological slowdown, emotional stability and perceptual sharpening. Successful applications of these findings have included (1) behaviour changes in children with autism, ADHD and mental retardation; (2) elderly disorders in Alzheimer's and stroke patients; (3) psychosomatic diseases in hypertension and diabetes; and (4) emotion and conduct changes in psychiatric patients. A general CCH system has been developed for users of Chinese as well as alphabetic writing systems.