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The Guardian
31-03-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Take two Van Goghs daily: the growing popularity of museum prescriptions
It was about six years ago that Nathalie Bondil heard of doctors prescribing outside the boundaries of traditional medicine, scribbling out orders to walk, cycle or swim, or sending their patients into nature. As she made her way through the halls of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, however, she was certain that its collection of Inuit art or paintings by Claude Monet or Camille Pissarro, could also be just what the doctor ordered. 'The museum is such a special place; it's an escape from our stressful, daily life,' said Bondil, who at the time was the museum's general director. 'And art is something that is interesting to the brain.' Her resolve gave rise to a pilot programme billed as a world first – in which thousands of doctors in Montreal were given free passes to prescribe to patients in the hopes of alleviating everything from depression and anxiety to diabetes and high blood pressure. Years after the pandemic sharpened issues around mental health, the practice has boomed, with doctors prescribing visits to museums from Montpellier to Massachusetts as a complement to more traditional treatments. This year doctors in the Swiss town of Neuchâtel became the latest to start handing out passes to their patients to peruse either museums or the city's botanical gardens. It's a shift from 2018 when the Montreal museum announced the idea, said Bondil. At the time, calls came pouring in from media around the world. 'We were really surprised. It was such a simple idea.' But there was seemingly little enthusiasm from other cultural institutions to take up the idea. 'People thought it was an interesting idea, but there was nothing more.' The pilot project in Montreal was, in some ways, a natural follow-up to a trend already playing out in the UK where some doctors were embracing 'social prescriptions' that advised patients to take part in sports or social activities. 'But this is different,' she said, describing museum prescriptions as the fruit of a formal agreement between at least one museum and healthcare institutions. Research has since backed the idea, suggesting that spending time in museums can reduce stress and loneliness, improve mood and boost mental health. For many healthcare providers, the prescriptions are a tool to tackle issues that they had no way to address before, said Tasha Golden, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Florida's Center for Arts in Medicine. 'For example, imagine a provider whose patient is profoundly lonely, and it's leading to depression. What's a typical provider able to do about loneliness?' The often carefully curated spaces of museums are well-equipped to fill this void, she noted. 'Research tells us that simply being in these types of aesthetic environments can positively shift how we feel, think and behave,' Golden said. 'We also know that museums can provide opportunities for social interaction, which can reduce loneliness and isolation.' And then there are the objects – whether art installations or antique cars – that are on display. 'Of course, exhibited items themselves – and the process of placing attention on specific pieces or collections – can elicit interest, curiosity, wonder, learning, mindfulness, which can all be beneficial for mental health.' The growing popularity of museum prescriptions, she said, 'reflects a growing recognition that humans evolved to make and share art and stories, histories and cultures', and how this evolution has helped humans to survive. Ultimately, what's on offer to visitors is a glimpse of the bigger picture. 'It's part of how we make meaning of our lives, bear witness to our lives, expand and develop our lives, process and share our lives.' However, Golden, who recently evaluated a Massachusetts pilot programme that included prescribing museums, said that it wasn't a one-size-fits-all solution. A small number of people described the experience as negative; some opted not to visit a museum due to concerns they would not feel comfortable or welcome, while others were left reeling after they were sent to museums that excluded or denied their history or culture. Their experiences reinforced the need for any prescriptions to be highly personalised, she said. 'You wouldn't want to recommend a car museum to someone who'd strongly prefer to see paintings, and you wouldn't want to prescribe a museum visit to someone who'd strongly prefer a different type of cultural experience,' said Golden. About 400 prescriptions were issued to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 2018 to its pandemic-induced halt in 2020. The museum said in a statement that it was currently developing a new version of the programme that would focus on group activities rather than self-guided tours. Pointing to the lingering aftershocks of the pandemic, Bondil, who is now a director at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, said she had little doubt of the growing need for doctors to hand out these sorts of prescriptions. 'We're in a moment where people are experiencing a lot of anxiety,' she said. 'So I do think that museums and art can help us more than ever.'
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Learn pain-relieving potential for dance, music, more from FAU neuroscience experts
When Dr. Jill Sonke first witnessed the potential pain-relieving power of the neuroarts, she was still in high school — and the term 'neuroarts' had yet to be coined. At the time, Sonke was an accomplished gymnast and dancer as a youth. A friend who was a singer had suffered second- and third-degree burns on her hand after a tea-making accident — and would require weeks of painful dressing changes. 'A few months earlier, I had given her a Joni Mitchell cassette tape,' explained Sonke. 'While she was in the hospital and going through very painful dressing changes and debridement procedures, she would play the tape, volume turned up, and sing at the top of her lungs. As she later described it to me, she transcended and survived her pain by singing. As an artist, that made perfect sense to me.' And it would be among the initial experiences that, decades ago, led Sonke to become one of the pioneering experts in how to use the neuroarts for improvement in all aspects of life — especially one's health. More Health Matters: Olympic gold medal gymnast Aly Raisman to talk mental health in West Palm Beach Today Sonke is a research professor and director of Research Initiatives in the Center for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida. And on Monday, she will be the guest of honor at a free symposium, "The Power of Arts & Science for Resiliency in Aging,' at Florida Atlantic University's Jupiter campus. The symposium is a collaboration of the Jupiter-based Mind, Music, and Movement Foundation for Neurological Disorders and FAU's Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute. "We are honored to host Dr. Jill Sonke, whose pioneering work in arts in medicine exemplifies the profound impact of creative expression on health and resilience," said Mind, Music, and Movement Foundation founder Beth Elgort. The aim of the annual event in its third year is to share neuroscience breakthroughs and offer opportunities for interactive demonstrations. Sonke will be one of a half-dozen panelists making presentations. Others include local neuroscience experts as well as those with experience in caring for folks as they age. Sonke's friend from high school was able to shift her state of consciousness and transcend the pain by singing. The singing wasn't merely a distraction: Science tells us that various arts can be an avenue to changing what's going on in the body and brain. "The fact is, we have limited cognitive capacity ― we can only pay attention to so much at one time," said Sonke. So when your brain is focusing on a mental or physical activity, it has less ability to focus on pain. Sonke also first experienced what experts call "transcendence" in her teens, as a competitive gymnast. "One day when I was in my junior year of high school, a dancer came into the gym to help with our floor exercise routines,' recalled Sonke. 'As she guided us, I found myself absorbed and lost in movement in a way I had never experienced. I felt a kind of energy and elation I had never felt. Although I didn't know the words or what they meant, I was experiencing both transcendence (a shift in my state of consciousness) and self-transcendence (an expansion of my conceptual boundaries). I knew I wanted to have that experience every day for the rest of my life. It was my first life epiphany.' However, she says that she didn't really think about transcendence or self-transcendence again until years later when, in 1994, she became a dancer in residence with the University of Florida Health Shands Arts in Medicine program. 'As a member of the hospital staff, I worked on the bone marrow transplant and pediatrics units, dancing with patients. Nurses and doctors wrote referrals for me to see their patients when they felt that the patients could benefit from movement or creative engagement,' she explained. That, she said, was when 'I really saw, through working with patients and delving into research, that arts engagement can make real changes in our brains and bodies. When we engage with the arts — either actively or receptively — we can experience a range of physiological and hormonal responses.' Among those responses, are a heightened flow of positive hormones — endorphins (our body's natural painkillers), dopamine (which elicits a feeling of joy when we anticipate or experience a reward), serotonin (a mood regulator and natural antidepressant that also heightens our sense of self-esteem) and oxytocin (our 'bonding' hormone) — as well as a reduction in the stress hormone cortisol, she said. Sonke will discuss how we can all reach the 'flow state'— which she explained is 'a state of consciousness in which our awareness is highly focused on the present moment and on the activity at hand. Flow state is a merging of action and awareness and often results in a sense of euphoria as well as a suspended awareness of time, or the sense that 'time flies.'' Two decades ago when Sonke needed back-to-back eye surgeries performed on the same day, she made music part of her treatment in between procedures. 'The day came, and the musicians — two guitarists — entered my room as I rested after the first surgery,' said Sonke. 'They asked if I had any requests but I didn't, so they chose two songs: 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' by John Denver and The Beatles' 'Here Comes the Sun.' As I listened, they transformed that moment of anxiety and pain into a moment of beauty and bliss. Tears flowed, not because I was afraid or in pain, but because I was wonderfully overwhelmed by the beauty of the music and the gift of presence, connection, and caring that the artists brought.' Sonke says both her own personal experience as well as the countless patients she's seen the arts benefit are the reasons why 'why medicine needs the arts. Art can't replace medicine. Art doesn't cure diseases. But artists are important members of our inter-profession healthcare teams.' If you go What: "The Power of Arts & Science for Resiliency in Aging' Where: Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Florida Atlantic University, 5353 Parkside Drive, Jupiter When: 5 p.m. Monday, March 3 Admission: The symposium is free but registration is required. Info: This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Experts explain how neuroarts provide natural pain relief and other health benefits at FAU event
