by Jenifer Milner
“Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak,” wrote playwright William Congreve in 1697. More than three hundred years later, Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, echoed Congreve’s thoughts about the healing power of the arts in the month after the September 11th terrorist attacks.

“This is precisely the time we should be providing a comforting experience,” said de Montebello. “People who haven’t had the heart yet to go back to work have been coming here for a sense of serenity and the intercession of other people, rubbing shoulders in a kind of womb of culture.” He added, “Hospitals are open. They’re around to fix the body. We’re here to fix the soul.” (1)

De Montebello would be surprised to learn that many hospitals and healthcare institutions throughout Europe and North America embrace arts programming for its healing qualities. These institutions quietly started incorporating the arts into their therapies and environments decades ago, seeking to alleviate suffering and “fix” the body or mind by involving the soul.

Arts experiences enhance healing
While still mysterious, the connection between the human mind, body, and spirit has a strong influence on well-being. The arts touch people at their most profound level. These experiences bring solace, hope, and healing to people in physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual crisis — sometimes in ways hard to quantify, yet still powerful anecdotally.

Five years ago, no less a publication than the Journal of the American Medical Association carried an article on the impact of the arts on healing. In “Creativity and the Arts in Health Care Settings,” healthcare arts consultant Annette Ridenour wrote, “Major health care institutions across the country have recognized the power of the arts, in all their modalities, to provide messages promoting healing and a sense of community.” Ridenour also noted that, “arts programming at major domestic and international health care institutions has been supported largely as a result of personal accounts from patients, visitors, and staff who have experienced the benefits of being in enriched environments. Their stories have spread from one hospital to another, promoting the belief that good-quality, patient-focused arts programming is providing significant therapeutic benefits to patients.” (2)

Although practitioners distinguish between arts-based therapies and arts-for-health programming, medical staff increasingly observe that creative experiences of all kinds provide positive health outcomes.

Dr. Stephen Anderson, who works with patients at Vancouver Hospital’s burn unit, says, “As a psychiatrist, I am mainly looking at the emotional state and it improves significantly after music therapy.” He says patients feel less depressed or anxious after music therapy sessions, plus they are better able to handle their pain. (3)

When it comes to arts programming, staff in healthcare institutions have noted the following therapeutic effects in patients: lower stress levels, faster recovery times, reduced need for pain medications, fewer complications from surgery, increased comfort, and more social support. Arts experiences also help to ease the fear and isolation many patients feel in institutions by enhancing their perception of the facility as a warm, caring place. (4) (5) (6)

Creating a healing environment
For visitors and healthcare staff, arts programming also offers benefits. Live music, poetry, stories, or artwork promote calm in recovery rooms or on the wards, soothing and restoring family members and friends. For nurses, doctors, and other healthcare staff, arts programming creates a more tightly knit community, which positively affects their work environment.

Healthcare staff also find respite from the emotional toll of caring for the sick and dying by participating in arts activities or enjoying the work of visiting artists. The process of making art relaxes and rejuvenates these caregivers, helping them to alchemize the things they witness daily into life-affirming, personal expressions.

Some medical schools now recognize the value of arts practice and humanities for their students. In 1992, Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia pioneered a medical humanities program, which now encompasses a book club, an artist-in-residence, a lecture series, and a selection of humanities courses, such as medical phenomena in art. The medical humanities program also includes a popular music-in-medicine program inspired by the university’s Tupper Band. Medical students started the concert band in 1979 as an extracurricular activity. Today, about 35 musicians still meet every week to rehearse.

Dr. Jock Murray, program director and former dean of medicine at Dalhousie, says the purpose of the medical humanities program is to help students “[develop] a better understanding of the human condition.”

In an article in Dalhousie Alumni Magazine, writer Virginia Beaton paraphrases Murray on the program’s benefits: “Sciences deliver the necessary information and technique. But humanities enrich each person by adding curiosity, imagination, understanding, and compassion.” Murray believes students who study medical humanities will become better doctors as a result. (7)

An idea whose time has come
One doctor who saw the potential for the arts in healthcare was Dr. James H. Semans, professor emeritus of surgery at North Carolina’s Duke University Medical Center. In the late 1970s, Dr. Semans believed arts performances would provide a “healthy distraction” for Duke’s patients and visitors. He pursued a collaboration with his local arts council to organize monthly performances in Duke’s cafeteria. But Semans believed the hospital could go further.

In 1978, Semans approached Janice Palmer with the idea of creating an arts program at Duke. Palmer undertook the challenge, staying with the job until she retired in 2000. To her surprise, Palmer discovered that the arts “had a presence in healthcare institutions across [the United States].” She says, “This was an idea whose time was arriving all over the place, and though the public at large had no idea what was going on, the arts-for-health movement was already well underway.” (8)

Palmer later became a leader in the movement. In 1989, she helped to launch the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that supports and serves the arts-for-health field. The society has since grown into an international network. And, in 1991, she coauthored the Hospital Arts Handbook. Today, she consults with institutions involved in setting up arts programs.

Palmer says, “Over the years, we’ve come to recognize three simple and basic tenets [of the arts-for-health movement]:

• Bring beauty into the space around us;
• Celebrate community; and
• Touch the spirit. (9)

Writers, poets, storytellers, musicians, dancers, actors, and visual artists strive naturally towards these tenets in their work. Their ability to engage patients, visitors, and staff in meaningful ways enriches the healthcare environment.

In Canada, the Friends of University Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, provides the one-on-one Artists in the Wards program, complete with an onsite art gallery. Manitoba Artists in Healthcare’s first healing arts program is underway at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. The organization aims to establish arts programs at hospitals and outreach programs throughout the city. The Canadian Music Therapy Trust Fund supports hundreds of programs in facilities across the country, including the BC Burn Unit at Vancouver Hospital. And St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver offered music and recreational therapy for acute-care patients until September 2002, when funding cuts led to the program’s demise.

A vital role for the arts
Arts programming has a powerful and proven role to play in healthcare. Yet, even here, the arts are vulnerable to financial pressures. Arts-for-health advocates currently have little clinical or statistical research with which to defend these programs. This situation may soon change.

Research is underway by the Society for the Arts in Healthcare and others to document and quantify the benefits of arts-for-health programming. But, “...is it possible to place a number value on the gratitude felt by a family with a dying mother visited by a musician in her hospital room,” says Janice Palmer, “or the consolation experienced by a nurse who reads — or better still writes — a poem about a suffering child?” (10)

Jenifer Milner directs communications for the International Council on Active Aging. Since 1992, Jenifer has worked in Vancouver’s arts and cultural sector, most recently as communications manager with the Greater Vancouver Alliance for Arts and Culture for almost five years.

1. American Arts Alliance. “September 11 Impact on the Arts Community,” Legislative Update, October 2001
2. Ridenour, Annette. “Creativity and the Arts in Health Care Settings,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Pulse: February 4, 1998
3. Gram, Karen. “Music that heals,” Vancouver Sun, 19 November 2001
4. Ridenour, Annette. Op. cit.
5. Gram, Karen. Op cit.
6. Manitoba Artists in Healthcare: http://www. mahmanitoba.ca/benefits_healthcare/ – accessed 18 December 2002
7. Beaton, Virginia. “Medicinal Mozart,” Dalhousie Alumni Magazine, 2000
8. Palmer, Janice. “An Introduction to the Arts-for-Health Movement. Or How the Arts Sneaked in on the Medical Model.” Community Arts Network: – accessed 6 September 2002
9. Palmer, Janice. Op. cit.
10. Palmer, Janice. Op. cit.

Last Updated: Tuesday, August 24, 2004