Art Therapy - The effect of adult colouring books

Since 2012, adult colouring books have become vastly popular and have lots of positive side affects to our mental health. People use them for a calming and soothing side effect if they are feeling stressed or just as an evening activity to do in front of the TV. They have become very popular over the past 6 years and it's not just a hobby for children, adults can concentrate their minds for a couple of hours and sink into a book of calming patterns and decorate to their own taste. From personal opinions, these books have a very positive effect on mental health, my mum and I use them and colour in together while watching a film, we negotiate different colour schemes and show each other for encouragement. As my mum suffers from depression she has found this activity very soothing on her brain and has made her feel calm and relaxed as a result of colouring.

"Like meditation, colouring allows the brain to switch off other thoughts and focus" - Kelly Fitzpatrick, 1/08/2017
https://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/06/health/adult-coloring-books-popularity-mental-health/index.html

Whether people want to use colouring as just a hobby or a way to therapeutically relax, adult colouring has calming side affects as proven in numerous articles.
Researchers and students at Johns Hopkins University have proven this:
http://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2016/03/coloring-can-be-therapeutic-for-students/
"When we color, different areas of our two cerebral hemispheres are activated, according to psychologist Gloria Martinez Ayala.

“The action involves both logic, by which we color forms, and creativity, when mixing and matching colors. This incorporates the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in vision and fine motor skills. The relaxation that it provides lowers the activity of the amygdala, a basic part of our brain involved in controlling emotion that is affected by stress,” Martinez Ayala told The Huffington Post."