Art in the National Health Service : a report / by the DHSS.

  • Great Britain. Department of Health and Social Security
Date:
[1984?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Art in the National Health Service : a report / by the DHSS. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Therapy or not Therapy? When people I meet hear me mention ‘art’ and ‘hospitals’ in the same sentence they usually say “oh! Art Therapy?” There is a difference between an activity which is therapeutic and an activity which is therapy. Michael John Spencer put this succinctly: As long as the quality of art is presented intact, it is an aesthetic experience first, not a session of therapy (p3) and, elsewhere: My premise is that the enjoyment of art is a basic human need, equal to that for food, clothing, and shelter. ... The need for art escalates in crisis. A sur- vivor from a German concentration camp wrote that he would trade his meagre daily bread ration for art lessons. ‘Bread is needed to an extent but it was the art lessons that really helped us to survive in concentration camps. They helped to salvage my soul, my dignity as a human being.’ Hospitals, prisons and nursing homes are societies in perpetual crisis. people are sepa- rated from families, removed from homes, and limited in freedom. They are in environments of general sensory deprivation... (p2) Of course, if one is deprived, then restoration to a more normal state is therapeu- tic, but it would be difficult to argue that ‘normality’ is therapy. ‘Art Therapy’ exists as a professional therapeutic service with a wide range of patients, often the elderly or the mentally ill. In some cases it is largely the institutionalisation of long-stay patients which is combatted rather than specific repair of damage. ** Professor Neil Kessell, a psychiatrist, speaking at a confer- ence on The Arts in Hospitals «xx in 1981 expressed the feeling that art is stimulating rather than specifically therapeutic, although art produced by mentally ill patients could aid communications with a psychotherapist. Professor Kessell also felt that art was a potent contributor to the overall therapeu- tic environment of a hospital. Here it would be appropriate to ask who the ‘art’ is for. Acute patients may be too ill to notice what their environment is like until they begin to recover. For long- stay or chronically ill patients, the hospital may become their home, but with precious few comforts of home. For staff the hospital is a busy place of work, but this does not mean that it has to look like a hermetically-sealed factory!! Visitors’ ideas of medical care are affected by the appearance of a hospital - this is an emotional reaction, despite the rationalisation: “Oh, but it has a very good repu- tation.” x Spencer M J, A Case for the Arts in Working Papers - The Healing Role of the Arts, Rockefel- ler Foundation 1978 ** Tilley-Moxon, Pauline and Faulkner, Alex, Visual Arts Intervention, Vols 1 and II, Bristol Polytechnic, Department of Professional Studies in Education, 1978-81. xx Conference Report on The Arts in Hospitals, 16 & 17 December 1981 (ibid)