An Art Prescription

Our local newspaper, The New Mexican, published an article from the Associated Press by Jamey Keaten. The headline reads, “Town lets Doctors Prescribe Free Museums as Therapy”.

We have all read how art can help people, but I have never seen a government move to recommend and subsidize it. This has occurred in a small-town called Neuchatel, beneath a medieval castle and a lake by that same name in the French speaking part of Switzerland. I like the way the article starts: “The world’s woes got you down? Feeling burnout at work? Need a little something extra to fight illness or prep for surgery?” … Neuchatel is offering its residents a novel medical option: Expose yourself to art and get a doctor’s note to do it for free.”

This pilot project is based on a 2019 WHO report that “found the arts can boost mental health, reduce the impact of trauma and lower the risk of cognitive decline, frailty and ‘premature mortality’.” So far, just 500 such prescriptions have been given out in this town, with a population of just under 45,000. If art can do that, it is worth the price … but here it is free. Think what it would save the government on medical aid. 

I thought that could never happen in this country, but I was wrong. The prestigious Stanford University also has a program for its community. It has teamed up with Art Pharmacy, an organization which according to its website, “enables personalized social prescribing services with healthcare, university, corporate, and government partners.”

https://www.artpharmacy.co

The Stanford program offers an arts prescription which is a set of engagements in the arts customized to your personal interest. Each engagement is called a dose. You are assigned to an Art Pharmacy Navigator who will get you free tickets or whatever other access you may need. After you have fulfilled your prescription, you can apply for a renewal. To me it sounds like a good way for student and teacher alike to cope with the stress of campus life.

There is a different program called CultureRx out of Massachusetts which has brought together 12 cultural organizations with 20 healthcare providers across the state allowing the latter to write prescriptions that might benefit their patients. The medical practitioners welcomed the plan as they saw the pleasure their patients got from enjoying the arts without the expense. I am guessing that most who are reading “Missives from the Art World” have the where with all to not have to worry about this expense but how many in the general population can afford the high entry costs for many museums or the price of theater tickets?
Another organization I never would have thought existed is Johns Hopkins University’s International Arts+Mind Lab (IAM Lab) an “interdisciplinary research-to-practice initiative accelerating the field of neuroaesthetics”. Their work focuses on “social prescribing” which includes art, music culture, nature, and social connections. All these have been shown to have important health benefits.

This concept is widespread if currently available only in small doses (pun intended). Arts on Prescription is a concept that has already been tested in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Germany, if on a small scale. There was an article a couple of months ago in The Atlantic magazine called “The Anti-Social Century”. Written by Derek Thompson the opening line was “Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics and even our relationship to reality”. The article stresses how we need to interact with others and how the absence of this leads to so many problems. Art prescriptions can help individuals, and, as a result, our society by encouraging them to engage in a shared experience of visual or performing arts.

In a world that has been found to be fraught with more and more stress, it is heartening to learn that the healthcare community is beginning to explore the relief that can be brought through exposure to art.