- Is there scientific evidence that art helps people's emotional well-being and mental health?
- What kind of improvements can the arts bring to the mental health of our students?
- How can an introduction to the museum institution help students?
- How can art be used to work on accepting emotions such as anger or fear?
- The pandemic has increased the number of students with anxiety and depression. How can we help them through art?
- Can art help manage symptoms such as obsessions and compulsions?
- What type of artistic activities are most recommended for students with specific educational support needs?
- How can spirituality be explored through art?
- What kind of artistic activities can be done in the classroom?
- When working with teenagers, can audiovisual languages such as short films or music videos also help us?
- How can we use music to work on emotions with students?
- How can we use theatre to improve mental health?
- We want to do a collaborative art activity between our students and people with mental health problems to address the stigma. Where do we start? What can we do?
What kind of improvements can the arts bring to the mental health of our students?
The World Health Organization (WHO) states that subjective well-being, self-efficacy, competence, and self-realization of intellectual and emotional capacities (among others) are signs of well-being in mental health.
The arts contain a complex language that aids human expression. As students incorporate language to reflect on the world and express their ideas, they find themselves and feel a part of the world.
The benefits that the arts promote in students are:
- They promote attitudes of self-improvement .
- They help with personal growth, self-knowledge and self-realization (by reflecting on themselves they have a greater awareness of their reality in order to transform it).
- They help overcome limiting situations and social labels. Working with art allows them to explore their healthy aspects and strengthen the skills they develop through the process. Discovering positive aspects about themselves also helps them take ownership of their role in the world.
- Improvement in autonomy (they can incorporate a language that allows them to initiate a personal artistic process that promotes autonomy in decision-making).
- Improvement of motivational aspects linked to response and involvement in activities. Through art, they enjoy activities that allow them to learn to be proactive and take ownership of their decisions.
- They promote integration (a vision of life from the environment and the community).
- They help us develop an undistorted perception of reality. By connecting us with others and offering dialogue to understand different social realities, the arts help people cultivate empathy and sensitivity, thus fostering a broader and, in any case, less distorted view of reality.
- They promote adaptation to interpersonal relationships . Art helps initiate personal and group processes and fosters social interaction. It helps them practice basic social forms and integrate and explore different personal aspects between reality, play, and personal and community work.
- To experience complex learning that links them to knowledge and the social environment , through open creative processes.
Playing with art, with artistic techniques in general, involves constant multidimensional training and a permanent opportunity for the development of personal and interpersonal skills that affect emotional well-being and mental health.
It improves communication skills and the ability to express what we feel and think, which is fundamental for preventing or addressing psychological distress. Art offers us particularly expressive languages that open up alternative channels of communication in an almost innate way.
Similarly, working with artistic formats provides us with tools to integrate and value information from our environment, giving it context and meaning in relation to different personal dimensions, and creating especially valuable spaces for active listening. This kind of listening can undoubtedly be particularly important in situations of personal distress, but also for developing empathy skills to understand and support those around us in their mental health processes.
But art, in our experience, also proposes non-critical spaces such as dramatic games where openness and acceptance give way to the opportunity to share complex life situations without fear of prejudice or the sharing of vital difference as a quality.
Art and creation, and particularly contemporary art (which is our area of focus), help us to imagine and broaden our perspectives, provoke reactions, and leave no one indifferent. It is a space for sharing questions and answers, where we are free to question, imagine, express opinions, and debate. These kinds of projects offer an opportunity for personal and collective growth through contemporary art methodologies and practices based on transformative and democratizing principles. This generates very interesting dynamics of exchange, mutual learning, equal opportunities, empowerment, personal reaffirmation, and improved self-esteem , all of which have a positive impact on the mental health of the individuals and groups involved.
We recommend consulting the Repository for arts and health resources , a repository that collects the development of the arts and health movement in the United Kingdom and internationally, from 1996 onwards.