- Details
- Category: Art and Well-being
When we think of art and mental health, we are most likely to think
of the trope of the “tortured artist.”Vincent Van Gogh, Francisco de Goya, and Edvard Munch -- three great artists with legendary works of art -- all had mental health issues that they struggled to mitigate in their lives.
Besides just the painters, musicians, writers, and performers have historically been associated with negative stereotypes of being creative people who also have mental health disorders. In her book Touched With Fire, the writer and psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison explores how bipolar disorder has a high occurrence amongst creative and high-achieving types.
Despite this bleak reality, studies have shown that making art and expressing your creativity can actually help your mental state, whether you have a diagnosed condition or are just feeling yourself struggle a little bit and want to get out of that funk in a healthy way. Art as a form of therapy - whether done as part of a treatment plan with a mental health professional or just because you love to create - has been studied for decades and research has overwhelmingly concluded that participating in making art can reduce your feelings of stress and, by extension, help relieve the physiological ways that your feelings of stress could be manifesting in your body, like headaches and back pain.
The act of creating art, regardless of skill, helps us release the anxiety and anger we might be holding in our bodies because of the things we see on the news or our social media feeds. Images of war, stories of children being harmed, and the state of politics where we live are constantly being pushed on us, and by taking the time to unplug and make something with your hands and your imagination can help us manage those feelings that we can sometimes feel powerless to.
And art does not need to be expressed through drawing or painting, it can be expressed through any number of other ways: pottery, photography, filmmaking, dance, and writing are all things we can make part of our daily lives to help us manage the ebbs and flows of our mental wellbeing.
One does not need to be a formally-trained or professional artist in order to reap the psychological benefits of making art, and they don’t need to be pursued professionally once you get started, either. One of the beauties of making art is that you don’t need to be “great” at it in order to participate. There are plenty of people who play sports without any illusion that they might play for a professional team or go to the Olympics, and making art is just as inclusive.
Getting started in making art for the benefit of your mental health can be very easy. You can grab a pencil and paper and start doodling what’s in front of you or in your imagination, or you can search for classes in your area that teach you the basics of a medium you’ve always wanted to try. Whatever works for you and brings you the relief you need.
