Is Art the New Cure: How Art Therapy is Being Used as a Way to Treat Depression
There are millions of people who suffer from mental illness every year. It can come in multiple different forms that can be both seen or hidden. Depression is a type of mental illness that can be developed by people of all ages, but is easily susceptible to adolescents. Depression can be threatening to children because it can affect their concentration levels and their overall ability to be happy. One solution to help people with depression is through art. Art can be used to help people with depression express what they are feeling, without having to put it into words, while also helping people in their community be more open minded towards mental illness.
Art therapy is one way to help treat individuals with depression. Art allows a person to express themselves and how they are feeling, which can apply to people with and without mental illness. In their experiment, Mansooreh Rahmani, Bahram Bakhtiari Saeed, and Mojtaba Aghili tested the effects of art and music therapy on adolescents experiencing depression. They survived twenty-four fifteen year old girls using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI), to test their levels of depression. They then split the girls in half, twelve would participate in seven two hour long art therapy sessions, with music playing in the background. The other twelve were the control group and did not participate in the art or music therapy. The results show that girls in the control groups level of depression changed little, while the girls who engaged in the art therapy had a low rate of depression afterwards. This study is one example of how art can help individuals with depression.
Depression is not something that should be taken lightly and can be harmful if not treated. Performance at one’s potential can be affected by depression due to side effects such as lack of energy or lack of motivation. Rahmani, Saeed, and Aghili say, “one of the most important risks in adolescence is depression which might severely affect adolescents and hinder them from any potential achievement,”(Rahmani, Saeed, and Aghili). Art is important because it opens the mind to different kinds of thinking and skills. As a person introduces art into their life, these traits begin to develop. Yo-Yo Ma a famous musician who attended Julliard writes in his article, Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education, about the importance of having a balance between art and science. He explains that art develops a kind of flexible thinking which can be used to increase science’s critical thinking. Ma says, “the values behind arts integration — collaboration, flexible thinking, and disciplined imagination — lead to the capacity to innovate,”(Ma 259). The point of art programs and therapy is often to increase these core values of art. It is theorized that by increasing the exposure of art to a patient it will decrease negative symptoms of depression.
The right and left hemispheres of the brain
Art does not have to be in the form of a painting to create an impact. Metaphor is a type of writing device that is used to describe abstract concepts, such as emotions. In his article, The Future of Science…Is Art, Jonah Lehrer explains how using combining art and science is necessary to increase the discovery of new scientific ideas. Lehrer describes examples of ways art is used in science, such as the use of metaphor is physics. He says, “the power of a metaphor is that it allows scientists imagine the abstract concepts in concrete terms, so that they can grasp the implications of their mathematical equations,”(Lehrer). While metaphor can expand scientific thinking, it can also impact a person’s emotions. It provides different ways to look at a situation and to see things through a different person’s point of view. Yo-Yo Ma describes the importance of being empathetic thinking into one’s daily life. He says, “to be able to put oneself in another’s shoes without prejudgment is an essential skill. Empathy comes when you understand something deeply through arts and literature and can thus make unexpected connections,”(Ma 258). It is so important to be able to empathize with people with not just depression, but also all mental illnesses. Being able to put oneself in another person’s shoes really makes for a clearer picture of the struggles and hardships that that a person has to deal with everyday.
Mask made in art therapy by solider with PTSD
Masks made in art therapy by soldiers with PTSD
Depression, like any disorder is not something that can be cured overnight. It takes time and effort to come out of a mentally dark place, and is not something a person can just decide they have or do not have. Hopefully through art, patients can learn new ways to deal with their depression and express themselves, while also discovering a new passion that simultaneously brings them joy.
Multimodal Statement
In my multimodal essay I wrote about how art can be a way to help patients with depression. Most of the elements that I am planning on using for my essay are going to reflect this theme. One multimodal element that I am using is a drawing of a brain, where the left side looks mathematical and scientific, while the right side is artistic. In real life this art is trying to depict the two different hemispheres of the brain, and the roles that each mostly play. For my essay, I hope to use this piece of art to reflect the different ways that anxiety and depression can be treated. Sometimes depression requires a more scientific approach and may need to be treated with medicine or another approach, while other times an artistic more creative approach may work better for the patient. There is also the possibility for elements of both practices to be used and are successful. I am hoping that my drawing of the brain will be a simple way to depict this concept and not become confusing. Another element that I used was examples of art that patients with PTSD. I feel like by doing this, it gives the reader examples of art therapy that has been done in real life. It shows them that this kind of practice can be used by therapists and that is has been. Due to the fact that my multimodal essay can only be so long, I put in two videos that explain a more in depth explanation of my topic. On of the videos talks about depression, and what it means to have depression. The second is a video that talks about art therapy. This video explains what art therapy is and how it is used and it has examples of participants’ reactions to it. I also added two data tables from the article that I chose. The data table shows the results of people who did and did not engage in art therapy. I chose to show this because I thought it would give the reader a better idea of what the studies results were by using a visual. These are some of the multimodal elements that I plan to use in my essay. I hope that they will be helpful to the reader to solidify my essay and the argument I am arguing.
