Background: Cognitive decline seen in old age manifests itself as a decrease in reasoning ability that is not related to intelligence. This situation, together with many other problems, can affect the psychological well-being of the elderly. Especially the elderly living in institutional care constitute a special group that needs to be protected. It is important that the psychotherapy interventions to be carried out with this group are determined according to the characteristics of the group. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of art therapy on cognitive status and psychological well-being in the elderly living in institutional care.

Methods: This single-blind randomised controlled study was conducted with 42 elderly individuals living in three nursing homes in Türkiye. In the study, the sample group was assigned to the experimental (n = 21) and control (n = 21) groups by simple randomisation. Art therapy intervention was applied to the elderly individuals in the experimental group, and no special intervention was applied to the control group. The sociodemographic information form, standardised mini mental test (MMT) and Psychological Well-being Scale for the Elderly (PWBS) were used as data collection tools in the study.

Results: It was found that there was a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test total scores of the PWBS and MMT in favour of the post-test (P < 0.001). In the study, the effect of the art therapy intervention applied to the elderly individuals in the experimental group was evaluated and it was determined that the difference between the PWBS ( η2  = 0.75) and MMT ( η2  = 0.52) scores had a medium effect level.

Conclusions: The results showed that art therapy has a positive effect on the psychological well-being and cognitive status of the elderly in institutional care and can be used as a moderate developmental intervention.