Art Is Communication on the Deepest and Lasting Level
We are facing huge public wellness challenges in the UK. Mental ill-health accounts for more than 20 per cent of these challenges, more than cancer and cardiovascular diseaseone.
As the number of people with long-term conditions increases and with an ageing population who may experience high levels of physical inactivity and social isolation, innovative and effective treatments is needed, more than everii!
The arts seem to have an important role to play in this – through offering help, promoting well-being and creating a space for social connection.
We've looked at the added value of the arts and how they tin keep us happy and in good mental health:
Being engaged in the Arts
Do you recognise a feeling of joy that you can get when taking part in cultural activities such as music, museums, dance groups and theatre?
Getting involved with the arts tin can accept powerful and lasting furnishings on health. Information technology can aid to protect against a range of mental health atmospheric condition, help manage mental sick-wellness and back up recovery3.
There are many ways to engage in arts and improve your mental health:
- Art and health programmes led by artists and musicians can evangelize health benefits through participatory arts programmes and arts engagement in everyday life.
- When we talk about the arts, we include visual and performing arts, such every bit traditional craft, sculpture, digital art, text, dance, film, literature, music, singing, gardening and the culinary arts.
"Arts and inventiveness are an important part of the programmes we run at the Mental Health Foundation, fine art can be a unlike and fun way to express and talk about emotion." Jolie Goodman, Programmes Manager for Empowerment and Later life.
Arts can make a powerful contribution to our mental health
Engaging in the arts seems to be growing in popularity every bit a mode to improve your wellbeing. Participating in the arts can enable people to deal with a broad range of mental ill-health conditions and psychological distress.
The best part is that it helps people to amend their mental wellness through creativity. Making art is helping many people express themselves, without having to employ wordsfour 5.
Arts tin can create a feeling of community
The arts also help at a customs level. Every bit we historic period, we might face isolation through a loss of social connections, such as friends, family unit and workplace - as well as other limitations such as decreasing physical health.
Through getting involved in arts programmes, people in afterwards life can rebuild their social connections and extend existing support in their communities. Getting in touch on with others helps in alleviating loneliness and isolation. This is as well true for care homes, where arts activities can help increase social interactions betwixt residents and residents and staff which can improve mood and wellbeingsix.
At the Mental Wellness Foundation, we are starting a new project. Creating Communities is an 18 months project funded past the Mercers Trust. Nosotros are facilitating peer groups in partnership with Anchor Hanover Housing using inventiveness and access to the outdoors to improve wellbeing and social connectedness for tenants in different types of subsequently-life housing schemes. In terms of creativity, nosotros will utilise paintings that people may be familiar with to brainstorm conversations about emotion and build on these.
We will assistance participants to utilise different materials to produce artwork that is relevant to them. Fifty-fifty if they don't retrieve of themselves as creative, we want to create an environment that encourages them to take fun and exist playful. Information technology may be that people are interested in bringing their memories to life.
The arts' valuable role in mental health is beingness recognised
More and more people now appreciate that the arts and culture tin play a valuable office in helping people who take mental health problems.
As we've noted: engaging in arts, social activities and interaction inside our communities tin help with major challenges such as ageing and loneliness. It tin can help to boost confidence and make us feel more engaged and resilient. Also these benefits, art engagement as well alleviates feet, low and stress.
The arts and health economics – information technology just makes sense
Since it tin can exist used as a non-medical approach to preventing mental health bug information technology could assistance salve coin in the health service and social care.
Making fine art can enable people to take greater responsibility for their ain health and wellbeing by helping maintain levels of independence and curiosity and improve the quality of life by bringing greater joyseven.
We have posted this blog that details the potential value of arts for mental health because the new MARCH network. The MARCH Network is ane of 8 new national networks funded by U.k. Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of the 2018 Cross-Council Mental Health Plus telephone call to further research into mental wellness. The Mental Health Foundation is ane of the collaborating partners in this network, which is led by Dr Daisy Fancourt (University College London).
Larn about the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival
1 way that the Mental Wellness Foundation supports using the arts to improve mental health is through the annual Scottish Mental Wellness Arts Festival (SMHAF). Now one of the largest festivals of its kind in the world, SMHAF brings together communities, artists and activists from all over Scotland to be creative and engage with arts events exploring mental wellness, including film, theatre, literature, visual arts, dance and comedy.
Find out more now
References
- World Health Organisation. (2008). Global burden of disease report. Available at: http://world wide web.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_ disease/estimates_country/en/alphabetize.html
- Thomson, L.J., Camic, P.M. & Chatterjee, H.J. (2015). Social Prescribing: A review of customs referral schemes. London: Academy College London.
- Coulton, S., Clift, S., Skingley, A. & Rodriguez, J. Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of community singing on mental healthrelated quality of life of older people: randomised controlled trial. Br. J. Psychiatry J. Ment. Sci. 207, 250–255 (2015
- Fancourt, D. et al. Effects of Group Drumming Interventions on Feet, Depression, Social Resilience and Inflammatory Immune Response amid Mental Health Service Users. PLOS 1 xi, e0151136 (2016).
- Ockelford, A. Songs Without Words: Exploring How Music Can Serve equally a Proxy Language in Social Interaction with Autistic Children. in Music, Health, and Wellbeing (eds. MacDonald, R., Kreutz, Grand. & Mitchell, L.) (OUP Oxford, 2012).
- Bungay, H. (2018). 'How prescription creativity can improve mental and concrete health', Medical Xpress, 5 April [Online]. Available at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-prescription-inventiveness-mental-ph...
- All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Wellness and Wellbeing. (2017). Artistic Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing. Available at: http://www.artshealthandwellbeing.org.britain/appg-inquiry/
Source: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/blog/how-arts-can-help-improve-your-mental-health
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