How 'lofty' art can help the medical world reimagine mental health

Description

We are amidst a global mental health crisis, states a recent review by the Lancet medical journal, and our ‘collective failure’ to respond to this results in ‘monumental loss of human capabilities and avoidable suffering’. To bring about policy and culture change, we must think outside the pillbox. The 2017 All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing inquiry report puts forward a robust argument for how the arts can ‘stimulate imagination and reflection’ and ‘change perspectives’. Yet the report rejects art that is ‘lofty activity which requires some sort of superior cultural intelligence to access’. Why should art of the ‘lofty’ variety be excluded from this conversation? Surely different types of art and different efforts should also chip in to help rectify our collective failure. As well as the quality of the artistic activity, the quality of the artistic output should also be a salient part of transforming how we see mental health, so that it is not shameful and not negative. Art stimulates and changes perspectives because it engages and develops cultural intelligence. Through an Arts Council England funded Unlimited commission, this article puts forward a case for 'lofty arts’ to play a role in effecting cultural and policy change in mental health. Entitled We Sat On A Mat and Had A Chat and Made Maps!, this was a 15-month art-science practice-led research project on mind wandering with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as a case study. Artist-curator Dr Kai Syng Tan’s collaborator is Professor of Psychiatry Philip Asherson. Both are based at King's College London’s world-leading Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre. This article was published on 31 October 2018, the last day of ADHD Awareness Month. Within 3 days, more than 2000 people had read it. https://theconversation.com/how-lofty-art-can-help-the-medical-world-reimagine-mental-health-105689

Period	31 Oct 2018
Held at	The Conversation, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International