Did you know that there is a significant connection between mental well-being and the arts?
The arts offer an evidence-based solution for promoting mental health. While participating in the arts is not a cure for all mental health challenges, there’s enough evidence to support prioritizing arts in our own lives and in education of all ages. As a licensed mental health therapist (LMHC) and a life-long lover of art, creating has been one of the best coping skills by using distraction and beauty to calm anxiety, create opportunities for connecting with others, and creating my own personal satisfaction.
Not Just Living, But Thriving – Mentally & Emotionally
The relationship between the arts and mental health is well established in the field of art therapy, which applies arts-based techniques (like painting, dancing and role play) as evidence-based interventions for mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression. There is also growing evidence that the arts can be used in non-therapy contexts for promoting mental health, such as using art to teach other subjects and enhance the education of our young people, providing expression for those with disabilities, slowing mental decline in aging, helping to create community especially during the time of the isolation created by the pandemic, and also as a key coping skill for anxiety, stress, frustration and depression. In essence, it helps us to sustain a sense of wellness.
In summary, the arts can be used to build capacity for managing one’s mental and emotional well-being.
The Arts & Brain Health
With recent advances in biological, cognitive and neurological science, there are new forms of evidence on the arts and the brain. For example, researchers have used biofeedback to study the effects of visual art on neural circuits and neuroendocrine markers to find biological evidence that visual art promotes health, wellness and fosters adaptive responses to stress.
Cognitive neuroscientists found that creating art reduces cortisol levels (markers for stress), and that through art people can induce positive mental states. These studies are part of a new field of research, called neuroesthetics: the scientific study of the neurobiological basis of the arts.
Neuroesthetics uses brain imaging, brain wave technology and biofeedback to gather scientific evidence of how we respond to the arts. Through this, there is physical, scientific evidence that the arts engage the mind in novel ways, tap into our emotions in healthy ways and make us feel good.
Mindfulness: Living in the Present Moment
The arts have also been found to be effective tools for mindfulness, a current passion and relevant tool that is effective for managing mental health. As a therapist with training in Dialectical Informed Therapy, mindfulness is a key component in DBT’s effectiveness in treatment resistant mental illness.
Being mindful is being aware and conscious of your thoughts and state of mind without judgment. The cognitive-reflective aspects of the arts, in addition to their ability to shift cognitive focus, make them especially effective as tools for mindfulness. Specifically, engaging with visual art has been found to activate different parts of the brain other than those taxed by logical, linear thinking; and another study found that visual art activated distinct and specialized visual areas of the brain. Thank you to theconversation.com for helpful information in this post.