Maker Activities in a Psychiatric Day Care Center

Maker Activities in a Psychiatric Day Care Center

Objective: Many Maker empirical studies have been published in Taiwan educational field, and the Maker has also been applied to health care field. The purpose of this study was to apply the Maker activities to patients at a psychiatric day care center. Methods: We included 10 schizophrenia patients in an eight-week Maker program at a psychiatric day care center. Being shown to have good reliability and validity, the clinical symptom checklist was used to assess patients’ symptoms of schizophrenia. We also assess the effect between the scores between pre and posttests. Results: The mean score of the clinical symptom checklist with standard deviation in the pretest was 3.75 ± 1.83 and that in a posttest was 0.50 ± 0.54. Using the Wilcoxon sum rank test, the difference between two tests in knitting Maker activity showed a significant decrease during the eight-week program (Z = -2.32, p < 0.05). Conclusion: Based on those findings, we suggest that the knitting Maker activity program can be used for patients in the psychiatric day care center to reduce the distress and to enhance their well being.