The power of art as a therapeutic tool

We’ve heard it all before – why spend money on art in hospitals if it could be used on medicine? But what if art is a type of treatment – a stressbuster that reduces anxiety, lowers blood pressure, and leads to better health outcomes and shorter stays in hospital? Over the past 30 years academic research has overwhelmingly indicated the positive effect that art can have in reducing anxiety and stress in healthcare environments. It has been proven to be very beneficial to service-users’ overall health and wellbeing, and this in turn can lead to tangible financial benefits for hospitals by reducing stay lengths. Healthcare institutions are increasingly recognising the value of integrating high quality artwork into capital schemes, and research studies are narrowing the focus to look at the most effective types of artwork for these environments.

One of the main reasons art can be so successful in healthcare is its ability to create a positive distraction – defined by Dr Roger Ulrich (Professor of Architecture at the Center for Healthcare Building Research at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden) as ‘holding the viewer’s interest and inducing positive feelings but not causing any further stress’.

Naturally we all respond to artworks in different ways – one man’s meat can be another man’s poison. Sometimes we don’t know why we like or do not like an artwork. Our responses can be based on a number of factors, including innate feelings; personal life experience; cultural/environmental/religious influences; education, or some other learned response. Therefore creating artworks to which the majority of people will respond positively can represent a real challenge. This emphasises the need to follow an evidence-based design approach to commissioning and creating art for healthcare environments that is based on reallife research studies, and is focused on the needs of service-users and their wellbeing.