TITLE:
An Empirical Study on Multisensory-Based Wearable Art Therapy as an Adjunctive Intervention for Depression
AUTHORS:
Rui Bao, Yuqi Liu, Xin Shu, Yiting Liu, Tiemei Huang, Sheng Zhang
KEYWORDS:
Depression, Wearable Art, Art Therapy, Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.4,
April
27,
2026
ABSTRACT: In response to the phenomenon of “alexithymia” often observed in clinical depression treatment and the spatiotemporal limitations of traditional art therapy, this study proposes an adjunctive intervention model termed “Wearable Art Therapy Based on Multisensory Cognition.” Through interdisciplinary collaboration between medicine and art, 11 patients with depression were randomly assigned to either a control group or an experimental group. The control group received standard treatment only, whereas the experimental group underwent additional wearable art therapy sessions, which comprised three core stages: material perception, embodied creation, and wearing experience. To address the limitations of subjective assessment scales, heart rate variability (HRV) was introduced as an objective physiological evaluation metric. The results showed that the mean HRV of patients in the experimental group increased significantly following the intervention, with an exploratory trend indicating a moderate to large effect size compared to the control group. The findings demonstrate that wearable art creation, integrating multisensory interaction and embodied cognition, effectively mitigates physiological stress and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Additionally, the handcrafted wearable artifacts serve as “transitional objects,” offering patients portable psychological support and sustained companionship beyond the confines of the clinical setting. This model has shown efficacy in alleviating depressive and anxiety symptoms, providing a scientifically grounded and innovative pathway for non-pharmacological adjunctive interventions in depression treatment.