An exploratory study of drawings by bereaved children

Bereaved and non‐bereaved children made drawings of a person, themselves, their family, and a topic of their choice; the drawings were then analysed to investigate whether the experience of bereavement was expressed in drawing in any reliable way. Bereaved children were no more likely than non‐bereaved children to include indicators of emotional disturbance in their human figure drawings. Bereaved children, however, were reliably more likely than non‐bereaved children to include themselves in a drawing of their family.