Mental Health Social Inclusion & Arts

      Mental Health Social Inclusion & Arts: Developing the Evidence Base – Final Report, 2007

OrganisationsReport of research aimed at developing the evidence base for participatory arts and mental health work. The Case studies explore the processes, benefits and outcomesof arts participation.

Here are some of the comments from the patients involved in this report:

• The best thing I have ever done. It was helpful in the process of healing from mental illness and that taught me a way of learning to relax and loving myself.
• When I am painting I forget everything else. Being part of a group and talking and opening up with the other members. Realising that I can develop my artistic skills I feel proud of what I have achieved and it has done wonders for my self esteem.
• It has made me realise that I can do things other than everyday routine; helped me to use my body and mind in ways I had nearly forgotten about.

From a position of relatively low priority until the 1990s, mental health has become an important strand of UK health policy, not least because surveys of psychiatric morbidity in the UK have revealed a considerable burden of ill health (Singleton et al., 2001). In this context, high levels of social exclusion amongst people with mental health needs are of increasing concern. On the one hand, exclusion from participation in community life leads to a downward spiral of increasing isolation and deteriorating mental health. On the other hand, it is now clear that with appropriate support even people with the most severe and enduring problems can and do recover, in some cases in the clinical sense of the absence of symptoms, and in others in the social sense of recovering a fulfilling life in the community regardless of mental health diagnosis (Harding et al., 1987; Secker et al., 2002).