30, September 2025

The Impact of Structured Art Therapy on Homesickness and Emotional Resilience in Residential Higher Education Entrants

VOLUME-11; ISSUE-9; SEPT-2025

Author(s): Dr. Hakalyah Palaparthy

Authors Affiliations:

Dr.Hakalyah Palaparthy

Degree Lecturer
Department of Psychology
MJPTBCWR Degree College
Telangana University
Nizamabad, 503003.

DOIs:10.2015/IJIRMF/202509035     |     Paper ID: IJIRMF202509035


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Feeling of homesickness is one of the most common psychological and emotional challenge that almost all the first-year students experience in residential education settings. This will sometimes lead to anxiety, loneliness and eventually impaired academic performance. To address this challenge and enhancing emotional resilience, alongside with the conventional therapy modalities, structured art therapy is showing promising results during transitional phases and gaining enormous research interest in recent times. The present study aimed to assess the efficacy of structured art therapy program in alleviating homesickness and enhancing emotional resilience among higher education entrants. A quasi-experimental pretest-post-test design with experimental and control groups was employed with a total of 60 first year students who are further divided into experimental and control groups with 30 participants in each group. The intervention consisted of 12 sessions over a period of 6 weeks, were provided to experimental group whereas control group didn’t not receive any therapy. Quantitative data were collected using the Homesickness Questionnaire (HQ), Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and UCLA Loneliness Scale before and after the therapy sessions. Drawn data were computed using SPSS- 26 version, means and SD for homesickness were calculated for both experimental and control groups and paired sample t-test to assess pre-post changes within the experimental group with respect to homesickness, loneliness and resilience scores. Independent sample t-test was deployed to compare changes between experimental and control groups. The experimental group showed significant reductions in homesickness and loneliness scores (p < 0.001) and a marked increase in emotional resilience (p < 0.001) indicating that structured art therapy can be considered as an effective and accessible intervention for managing homesickness and fostering emotional resilience in first-year college students. These findings support its integration into campus mental health programs to enhance student well-being during academic transitions.

Structured art therapy, home-sickness, emotional resilience, first-year college students.

Dr. Hakalyah Palaparthy (2025); The Impact of Structured Art Therapy on Homesickness and Emotional Resilience in Residential Higher Education Entrants, International Journal for Innovative Research in Multidisciplinary Field, ISSN(O): 2455-0620, Vol-11, Issue-9, Pp.241-248.          Available on –   https://www.ijirmf.com/

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