Effects of an insect-mediated mental healthcare program for mentally disordered children

Insects are the most diverse groups of animals on the planet, representing more than one-half of all known living organisms, and are found in nearly every environment. Recently, the importance of insects as food sources or as pets has increased in many countries, including Korea. In addition, several insects have been shown to exert a strong influence on people's emotions. Our insect-mediated mental healthcare program is designed to help meet the physical, behavioral and developmental needs of people with mental disorders. Children with mental disorders, the experimental group, were provided with an insect-mediated mental healthcare program for a total of eight sessions, one session per week, at 1-2h per session, accompanied by a pre-test and post-test. The overall, gender, education level, and mental disease profiles of the participants in this study were balanced. Our results indicated that children who participated in the insect-mediated healthcare program group once showed significant improvement in their emotional health and insect awareness. Additionally, paired education level's t-tests showed that the outcomes of the participants in treatment group were significantly improved (α < 0.05). However, participants' satisfaction with their school life (middle school) was not influenced. These results suggest that insects positively influence children's emotional health through an insect-mediated healthcare program. Further research on the basis of this study is expected to help children with emotional therapy in other areas.