Art Medicine
By Nine Red Presents…(CIC)
Art Medicine by Queen’s Award Winning community interest company NINE RED Presents…(CIC).
Art Medicine is creative practices that promote healing, wellness, coping and personal change. Traditional healing arts include music, art, dance/movement, poetry/writing, and drama therapies.
These approaches combine artistic expression with psychological awareness and communication and are led by experienced practitioners.
Bring Out Your Best
There are many more things, between heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.—Shakespeare, Hamlet.
A series of multi-tiered programmes that use arts, performance arts, carnival arts, creative arts therapies, holistic treatments, integrative medicine and other healing approaches to enhance the quality of life, health and well-being..
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines holistic health as: “viewing man in his totality within a wide ecological spectrum, and … emphasizing the view that ill health or disease is brought about by an imbalance, or disequilibrium, of man in his total ecological system and not only by the causative agent and pathogenic evolution.1(p13)”
In the WHO 1946 preamble, health is defined as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being rather than merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
This definition purports to tie health outcomes or changes in health as a result of an action. In this case, the connection is between arts participation and the psychosocial and biological manifestations of that connection.
Below we sight scientific studies that provide evidence that engagement with artistic activities, either as an observer of the creative efforts of others or as an initiator of one’s creative efforts, can enhance one’s moods, emotions, and other psychological states as well as have a salient impact on critical physiological factors.
Over the past decade, there has been a significant rise in chronic diseases. Many chronic conditions are associated with psychosocial difficulties, such as depression and chronic stress. Engagement with creative pursuits potentially reduces stress and depression, providing a mechanism to alleviate the burden of chronic disease.
National Center for Biotechnology Information – National Library of Medicine article “Music and the brain: the neuroscience of music and musical appreciation“. “Through music, we can learn much about our human origins and the human brain. Music is a potential therapy method and a means of accessing and stimulating specific cerebral circuits. There is also an association between musical creativity and psychopathology. This paper provides a brief review.”
National Center for Biotechnology Information – National Library of Medicine article “The Connection Between Art, Healing, and Public Health: A Review of Current Literature” – Heather L. Stuckey, DEd and Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH “This review explores the relationship between engagement with the creative arts and health outcomes, specifically the health effects of music engagement, visual arts therapy, movement-based creative expression, and expressive writing. Although there is evidence that art-based interventions are effective in reducing adverse physiological and psychological outcomes.