BLOGS
The Art of Self-Care: Mental Benefits of Art
Art is a universal language that everyone can understand. It’s a widely-known way to express and communicate one’s ideas and thoughts that help the artist convey their message to the world. While the talk about mental health is still a stigmatized topic for many people, the use of arts to open up about mental health has been a long-running practice already for centuries. Engaging in arts has many benefits that can improve your mental health and your overall health and wellness.
The Benefits of Art
1) Art Can Help in Self-Expression
Art is a form of expression where you can convey your emotions, feelings, and thoughts you can’t put into words. Putting a blank canvas into life allows you to express your inner feelings and emotions you can’t or usually can’t talk about. Communicating with people with arts is effective in connecting with people and sending your message universally across any language or even cultural barriers.
2) Art Can Improve Social Skills
Learning and doing art helps you connect with other artists of the same art medium. Making a mural with other artists or being in an online community helps broaden your communication skills and get along with others. You’ll also find it helpful to listen to other creators’ suggestions and give your own constructive input on other people’s work.
3) Art Can Help You Cope with Anxiety and Depression
Making art helps you cope with anxiety and depression, especially when you can’t put feelings into words. Art therapy, for example, is helpful for people who can’t talk about their mental health with people around them. Art can help you process pain and help you find your direction toward healing. It also helps you focus on the moment while making art and away from the things that worry you.
4) Art Can Help You To Stay Active
Art will make you move your body and help you stay active, whether you’re doing paintings, music, dance, or other art forms. Joining groups or classes or participating in competitions allows you to move more freely and keep an active life by engaging in activities that make you busy. Most importantly, it’s fun and enjoyable to do.
5) Art Can Give Stress Relief
Being in a constant state of stress weakens your physical and mental health. A creative outlet such as art is one of the best ways to combat stress. Studies show that taking time out through art-making when you’re feeling stressed or down reduces cortisol, the stress hormone. Drawing, doodling, coloring, or creating something helps you blow off some steam. It’s a great way to feel less distracted and more relaxed to calm your mind.
6) Art Can Improve Memory And Critical Thinking
Learning about making art exercises your brain by encouraging creative and critical thinking. Creating an artistic output allows you to express yourself in the medium of your choice and makes you process ideas and see things from a different perspective. Continuously boosting your artistic skills with regular practice and determination improves your memory and decision-making skills for your creative work.
7) Doing Arts Can Slow Down Aging-Related Diseases
Aside from reducing stress and improving your brain activity, arts can also slow down the effects of aging. According to research, doing artistic activities can help prevent and slow down aging-related diseases by:
- Reducing stress, depression, and anxiety
- Improving cognition
- Regaining confidence in self
- Eliminating boredom
Aside from this, patients with Alzheimer’s disease can also benefit from arts by providing a way to communicate their emotions or feelings that they can’t express in verbal language, such as in music.
8) Art Can Help Create a Sense of Community
Art is a powerful universal tool to bind people closer and work together towards a common goal. It brings together people regardless of their identity, culture, and beliefs through communication and understanding with artistic media. Art serves as a platform to address and talk about social issues and concerns of a community by conveying the message through music, visual arts, or performances. It is used as a form of protest against social injustices, racial discrimination, violence against women and children, and war and poverty.
How Arts Can Improve Mental Health
As mentioned earlier, engaging in arts is a great way to cope with anxiety and depression and relieve stress. Arts can help improve your mental health in many ways and benefit your overall well-being.
1) Boost Your Self-Esteem
Creating art on your own gives you a sense of accomplishment and makes you feel good about yourself. Seeing a physical output from your unique ideas and thoughts boosts your self-esteem from accomplishing something. Having hobbies involving arts and crafts provides you with a sense of worth and confidence in your abilities.
2) Expressive Outlet through Art
Art is the best outlet to express oneself to the world effectively. Expressive art media, such as visual arts, writing, music, and performance arts, allow the artist and the viewers or audience to laugh, let go, and relax together. As a medium of expression, art also allows artists to voice out their struggles or personal conflicts and find sympathy and solidarity with people in the community.
3) Healing and Self Care
Recovering from trauma takes time and is a complicated process to go through. Sometimes, you may have pent-up emotions or thoughts you can’t put into words. Some people can heal and recover by processing the pain from their trauma through art and providing reconnection with the mind and body.
For example, the use of art therapy in mental illnesses allows someone to help themselves find their medium of self-expression and develop new coping skills.
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is the use of artistic methods or outputs to treat mental illness and enhance the mental health of a person. It’s a program used as a part of management strategies for people living with mental illnesses as a form of healing and mental wellness and being.
Art therapists guide a person in using arts as a medium of expression as part of counseling and psychotherapy. The use of art as a technique to treat the illnesses of the mind came from the idea that creative output is a form of communication, expression, and healing for anyone who can’t put their emotions, feelings, and ideas into words.
The techniques an art therapist may use in art therapy can include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Collage
- Coloring
- Doodling and scribbling
- Drawing
- Finger painting
- Painting
- Photography
- Sculpting
- Working with clay
Painting about Mental Health
The use of paintings to tackle mental health issues is not at all a new topic. Mental health has served as an inspiration to artists for centuries already. Art media depicts the human experiences of the highs and lows of our psyches in relatable or interpretative forms.
Artists around the world used paintings and visual arts to portray mental suffering, instability, and emotional distress. For example, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch depicted emotional turmoil and trauma in many artworks. His famous work, The Scream (1893), depicts the face of anxiety and uncertainty of a screaming person with black figures at the back on an eerie, apocalyptic background.
Home Meets Art at Brittany
Brittany brings a world-class artistic selection of home designs where luxury meets comfort for you. Our homes aim to bring families closer to comfortable living spaces so they can come back to a place of solace after a long day outside.
Our living locations offer different artistic home designs inspired by different world destinations:
Click on this link for available listings of luxury real estate properties by Brittany Corporation. Any questions about homes and living spaces that are available? Go through this link or contact them soon for an appointment. You may also contact them here for concerns and inquiries.
