Parisa Art Therapy

The primary purpose of this research was to find an innovative and progressive way to reduce the cost of U.S. hospital care. Hospital stay costs have been on a rising trajectory and are projected to rise bout 6% per year (US Bureau of Labor Statistics). We examined whether a modest change to patient environment could result in an overall cost reduction. We examined the cost-benefit ratio of installing artwork that would lift the mood of patients. The Abstract Romanticism paintings of Kamran Khavarani became our focus because the late Professor Albert Boime (2008b), perhaps the foremost Social Art Historian of our time, wrote that Khavarani’s work “…resurrects the possibility that art can change the world by reaching out to the heart and imagination of the spectators.” In addition, Mozayeni and her colleagues (Amirmostofian & Mozayeni, 2016; Mozayeni & Amirmostofian, 2016; Mozayeni, Heiner & Amirmostofian, 2017) found that viewing Khavarani's Abstract Romanticism paintings resulted in significant improvements in reported mood compared to viewing paintings of other artists.

We conduct a pattern analysis of the survey of 252 individuals who visited three galleries, one of which was the experimental gallery (Khavarani’s). We consider the before and after moods viewers report for each gallery. Every subject visited three galleries, albeit in different orders. We generate plots for time series for subjects’ scores by gallery. We transform the data into jittered scores to create discernible pattern for each group. Their plots show that for the group of subjects visiting Khavarani’s gallery first, almost every subject experienced an increase in their mood and usually the after mood from the experimental gallery, was their mood before entering the second gallery...

This research is an extension of Amirmostofian, Mozayeni (2016). Our hypothesis is that Khavarani’s painting style, Abstract Romanticism, combines artistic elements that impart positive effect on viewers’ psyche. Our data encompass 320 surveys. Previously, we reported three nonparametric tests results, and concluded that Khavarani’s paintings have positive effects on viewers’ psyche...

Kamran Khavarani created his own art genre, but he wasn’t sure what to name it. That’s why he called Albert Boime, a late UCLA art history professor, who later hailed Khavarani as the leader of a new artistic movement called “abstract romanticism.” Khavarani is a decorated architect-turned-painter whose work has inspired research on art therapy and was the subject of Boime’s final book, “The Birth of Abstract Romanticism.”...

This study uses heuristic research as the basis for an art exploration into the experience of exposure to traumatic events leading to complex trauma, from early adolescence to adulthood. This paper reviews the existing literature about Islamic religious fundamentalism, political violence and war...

Our hypothesis is that Khavarani’s painting style, Abstract Romanticism, combines artistic elements that impart positive effect on viewers’ psyche. Our data encompass survey of 318 viewers’ responses, recorded in six Likert scales. We used Random Group Design to administer and organize the data. Our estimation results, using the Friedman, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests, produced χ2 values, which confirm our hypothesis with 95-100% confidence. We conclude that Khavarani’s paintings impart positive effect on viewers’ psyche. In a future study, we’ll report that such effect is independent of viewer’s age, gender, and their base mood. We invoke Vartanian and Skov (2014): When our subjects viewed Khavarani’s paintings, they “maximized the utility of the moment” and “disengaged” from their external world. We recognize that as experiencing meditative joy.

How many times have you heard this common statement: “we don’t want to get divorced because of our children!!!”? It is ironic that many couples who experience problems in their interpersonal relationships use their children as the excuse for staying in that dysfunctional relationship or marriage. It is understandable that change is difficult especially when facing a conflict with a partner who is supposed to be an effective team mate rather than being against you. Making the effort to get out of a relationship seems hard when you are emotionally trapped. Change seems so challenging when you have children too and you cannot feel confident enough to deal with the future responsibilities alone. There will be financial difficulties, emotional strains and mental or physical suffering. Facing all of these challenges will be tremendously difficult. It is disabling and hard to handle the challenges, so it is natural to feel stuck, trapped and hopeless.

VIDEO: Watch Channel One News interview with Parisa Amirmostofian.

The way we protect ourselves from things that we don't want to think about or deal with is called a defense mechanism. This term worked its way into everyday language from Freudian psychoanalytical theory and we commonly refer to different kinds of it to describe feeling states. Think of the last time you referred to someone as being "in denial", accused someone of "rationalizing", or asking someone not to “project” their stuff on you.  Some of these states are often confused with coping strategies which are generally the adaptive or constructive solutions for dealing with stress and anxiety.