Engaging in the arts for enjoyment, entertainment or as a hobby can be good for your mental, social and physical wellbeing, according to Dr Christina Davies and fellow researchers at The University of Western Australia.
An award-winning paper, published in BMJOpen in April 2014, was the first international study to look at the link between general population health and arts engagement.
The researchers found that engaging in the arts as part of everyday life (for example, listening to music, reading, painting, dancing, playing a musical instrument, creative writing or attending arts events) could make a difference to the health of individuals and the community.
Good mental health is the foundation of individual and community wellbeing. “In this study, arts engagement was found to make people feel happy; it reduced their stress and resulted in the creation of good memories,” Dr Davies said.
“Study participants also felt the arts gave their life more meaning, helped them meet new people, reduced social isolation and broadened their ideas and beliefs. The arts also had an impact on general knowledge and identity, and resulted in physical activity, such as walking and performance-based movement.
“Given the significant pressure on our health system, the arts may hold the key to a new type of health promotion and healing,” Dr Davies said.
These findings have attracted significant international attention. The published paper received widespread coverage (nine newspaper articles, five e-articles, two magazine articles and 97,358 tweets). Internationally, this puts the paper in the top 1% of articles by attention (based on 2.7 million articles across all journals, Altmetric).
Dr Davies said the study, which won an Arts and Health Australia Award for Research Excellence in 2013, provided new insights into the relationship between the arts and population health and was a step towards the development of a causal arts and health model.
The doctoral research of Dr Davies (who is a painter as well as an academic) examines how arts might promote health and wellbeing in the general population (that is, Arts for Health), and the viability of the arts as a setting to promote health (that is, Health in Arts).
Read the full article “The Art of Being Healthy” on BMJOpen.
Read more about Christina Davies on the University of Western Australia website.
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