The Mental Health Benefits of Creating Art
When I pick up a paintbrush, I pause for just a second to embrace that familiar rush of exhilaration as it runs through me.
As I add line and colour to my illustrations, my mind relaxes and the noise of my thoughts and worries fade into the background.
In the middle of the weekend chaos that being a Mum of two brings, frustrated at having to find two minutes to paint a Harry Potter scar on my son’s head, when I grabbed those face paints my mind went still. The impulse to just sit on that bathroom floor and paint swirls and flowers all over my arm (I’ve done it before…) was almost overwhelming. And whilst I had to fight it, just the thought, along with the feel of the brush in my hand, brought about a much needed wave of peace.
Art both calms me down and lifts me up. It soothes and energises. It transports me and anchors me.
Yes, I’m an artist. So of course creating art takes me to a happy place. But did you know it can do the same for you?
How does making art improve mental health?
The process of making art can improve our mental health in so many ways.
Express feelings: sometimes, the things we feel are too big and too complex to explain in words. Keeping it all locked inside, with no way to communicate how we’re feeling, or enable a much-needed release, can be like a pressure cooker inside our bodies. Through painting, drawing, sculpting, whatever medium we choose, we may be able to finally express our feelings and achieve emotional release.
Stress relief: making art can create a physical release of stress for the mind and body. Becoming absorbed in the process, allowing nothing but the art to matter for that moment of time, both body and mind are able to relax and switch off to the worries of the world.
Accomplishment: when our mental health is poor, often our self-esteem can be low. We can feel like we’re failing, even at the smallest things. Creating something from beginning to end can bring a sense of achievement, a moment of pride. It can be a reminder that you can achieve, that you can see things through.
Increase happiness: In May, we talked about how looking at art can release dopamine, the feel good chemical that improves our mood and gives us energy. Well making art can have that same affect.
So should you try it?
Creating art can be a mood-lifter, stress-reliever, and energiser for anyone, whatever their current state of mental health.
Studies show that “art therapy” can be effective in improving mental health for people dealing with a number of mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, addictions, attention disorders, eating disorders, trauma, PTSD and grief. It can even help those dealing with the mental and emotional effects of physical illness and relationship or career issues.
Having said that, it is important that it feels right for the individual. The process of creating art can help you explore and connect to emotions and feelings that maybe you’re not yet aware of, or aren’t yet ready to face.
If you give it a go, you can always stop if you need. It will be there waiting for you to go again when the time is right.
What if you’re not good at art?
Who cares?! No one but you ever has to see it. And who’s to say what good art is anyway. We’ve all looked at prize winning and famous pieces and wondered if someone’s playing a trick on us because we just…don’t…get it!
When it comes to improving our mental health, the benefits come from the process. The end result is an achievement, for sure, but it’s the time and space, the connection and the peace that the journey allows, that soothes and boosts and heals.
Back in May, I wrote about the mental health benefits that looking at art can bring, and about the upcoming mural work I would be taking on in Parklands Hospital in Basingstoke. Parklands is an inpatients facility, home to a variety of adult mental health wards and community hubs.
In June, I completed the first mural in Juniper Ward, and over the course of 4 weeks in September, I completed the second in Cherry Ward.
Because the murals are inside the ward, both patients and staff have come by as I work. They’ve stopped to watch, to ask questions, and sometimes chatted away to me as I paint. And even though I was the one holding the paintbrush, it’s felt as though we’ve created it together. There are even little additions to my original design, from suggestions and requests that were made as they became more and more engaged with the scene I was painting. A little mouse over here, a deathly hallows sign over there. A few Harry Potter references scattered around in fact! As staff and patients wandered by, they became entwined with the process, watching it unfold, waiting for the next section to take shape.
So whilst scientific, and I’m sure very technical and lengthy, studies have shown all of the above to be true, I feel privileged that my time at Parklands has meant I’ve seen it in action - both the positive effects on mental health by the presence of art and the creation of art.
What an incredible job I have, to be able to directly support mental health and wellbeing in that way. And not only through the murals. When I look back through my portfolio and the projects and collaborations planned for the future, I have and will continue to use art to promote kindness and compassion, to directly draw awareness to the importance of, and issues surrounding, mental health, and to encourage self-care and wellbeing.
In turn, my own mind is kept healthy. The joy I feel holding that paintbrush keeps me going when the business side of this career gets tough. The relaxation that comes as I flood my pictures with colour, eases the worry over paying bills. The explosion of ideas that fill my head when I walk into my studio, they keep me going, they give me purpose. And the sense of pride I feel when a piece is complete, or when I reflect back, it reminds me over and over why I do this.
Creating art, being both my work and my passion, means I am intrinsically linked to cycle of good mental health, for myself and for others. I’m proud to be an advocate for something so overlooked, yet so important to us all.