Should we be surprised that art can improve health?

With the arrival of worldwide lockdown, the arts have been welcomed as a source of escapism and entertainment, with televised life drawing classes and craft programmes appearing across channels. Even before lockdown, there has been a movement towards the merits of art as a form to improve health and wellbeing.

The 1970s TV series ‘The Joy of Painting’ presented by painter Bob Ross had become a major online hit, with over 300 million views on YouTube and an army of followers proclaiming how watching him paint had positively affected their mental health. This may just seem like a nostalgic fad, but it does point to deeper feelings about the merits of the arts for wellbeing and mental health.

Manganese and blue vessel. Stoneware. 42 x 32 cm, Anthea Summers

The UN’s World Health Organisation, recently published a report which affirms the science behind the already assumed benefits of visual arts as a component to improved wellbeing.

This 147 pages report looked at 3000 studies over the last two decades to explore the simple question “What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and wellbeing?”

The WHO, Regional Director for Europe Piroska Östlin questioned the necessity of this work all to honestly, explaining in her press release, “Should we be surprised that art can improve health?" For those of us actively exposed to the creative industries, the arts and cultural imagery on a daily basis, this is perhaps an assumption. Now, thankfully for this comprehensive exercise, we can affirm the major role the arts can play in both the prevention and treatment of wellbeing.

The report demonstrates the logic connecting both the arts and health, see below. Identifying the components that stimulate different responses and outcomes. Each component can trigger a different response; psychological, behavioural, social or physiological. In sport, going for a long run may trigger certain responses. In the arts it’s the same, for example when artwork makes you use your imagination or stimulates thinking this can trigger behavioural responses; from critical thought and opportunities for learning and seeing differently perspectives.

On an individual level this idea isn’t really nothing new - we know the joy and peace that wandering through a gallery can bring, however this report brings the concept up to an institutional level, written to promote policy change. It reveals how art can and should be placed alongside activities such as exercise as an integral factor in our daily wellbeing.

As a side note, it also offers a way to address the popular image of the arts and artist. Society has often propagated the idea of ‘mad genius’ artist, kept sane by their art - look at how we remember Vincent van Gogh - alongside with crass analogy of the ‘artsy bohemian’. Its time to change this view, take art seriously and see how it can help us all live more fulfilled lives.

In recent years, society has begun to realise that all of us can be affected by periods of mental ill health - just like we get a yearly cold - and we’ve realised the need to take care of our minds on a daily basis, not just in extreme moments. Art offers a respite, a support, a joy, that can help us in a very simple way. As we now know, mental and physical health are directly linked, and a simple dosage of art in our lives can truly benefit them both.