A dose of cultural medicine

A study into community arts projects across
the North West of England has revealed conclusive, medical proof that the arts are good for us. The tangible benefits to mental health and well-being have been recorded in a study by Dr Asiya Siddiquee, a lecturer in the Social Change Research Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University, who presented her findings at the annual conference for the British Psychological Society. Dr Siddiquee and her colleagues focused specifically on the psychological outcomes for 96 participants engaged across six arts projects – including creative writing, photography and dance – to find that the significant link between arts and improvements to anxiety, depression and overall well-being has scientific, as well as anecdotal, grounds. 

The findings go some way to echo what the likes of Synergy Theatre, a professional company working towards rehabilitating prisoners and ex-prisoners through its cultural projects, have long maintained. Synergy’s Artistic Director Esther Baker, whose current production of Jesus Hopped the A Train is playing in London’s West End, remains steadfastly committed to the belief that
“theatre has inherent therapeutic qualities and values”. Synergy has trained and developed myriad ex-offenders, who have often had complex social and psychological problems, in roles on and offstage. “We are a mainstream theatre company,” she said, “but one [that crucially] understands the empowering effect [our work] has.”
Laura McPartlin, Refugee Arts Director for Pan Intercultural Arts, who devises workshops and projects for culturally diverse groups of young people, takes a similar line: “Pan uses the arts to affect social change. A lot of what we do can be difficult to measure qualitatively, but the empirical evidence shows that time and time again, culture has obvious health benefits for the young people we work with.” Dr Siddiquee’s study relates clear examples of community arts projects boosting confidence and levels of happiness amongst participants, particularly those already suffering mental health problems. McPartlin agrees, “I worked with one eight-year-old girl, for example, who had previously been so badly traumatised that she became a selective mute at a very young age. She could only speak in front of her family. After a year or so of interacting with Pan, of just having fun and sparking her imagination with the group, she eventually overcame her silence – she did begin talking again.”
It’s one of many happy endings that community arts companies like Pan, like Synergy, can report, and something Dr Siddiquee’s study serves to underline. For medical and arts professionals, there might even be hope that continued awareness of the social benefits of culture could change the ways in which public health is treated. It would not be unheard of: doctors in Skåne, southwest Sweden, began a state-funded pilot last December to prescribe ‘arts’ to mildly depressed, anxious or stressed patients to counteract a culture of pill-popping. Recipients of the progressive treatment have been offered anything from singing lessons to art appreciation classes by their GPs, who have embraced the initiative and reaped largely positive results.