Art for heart's sake
The medicinal value of art is increasingly becoming recognised, as GPs refer patients to creative classes.
Martin Whittaker
Tuesday May 8, 2007
At her weekly art class, Sue Evans is teaching a group of students the basics of drawing. Pete Wyatt, a pensioner, is learning how to sketch in proportion using a wooden artist's mannequin. His wife, Kath, is drawing shapes in charcoal. Across the table, Jean Gough is working on a pastel painting of candles and fruit.
This could be any college art department, but it isn't. It's a doctors' surgery.
Wyatt was referred to the course by his GP after suffering a stroke last year. "I think this should be available for most people," says his wife, who takes the classes with him. Wyatt chips in: "It's a godsend."
It was Dr Simon Opher's idea to offer patients art classes and he tried it out at his practice in Dursley, Gloucestershire. His scheme, christened Art-Lift, has now been adopted in 10 surgeries, three hospital wards and two mental-health units across the county with £73,000 from the Arts Council.
Artists including painters, designers and ceramicists are giving patients classes, under the scrutiny of a research team from the University of the West of England, who are evaluating their impact.
"Many patients have problems that aren't primarily medical in origin, such as poor relationships, housing or social problems, and they come in because that is affecting their lives," says Opher.
"The original problem is the one that needs sorting out, yet they're given antidepressants for it. This is a way of trying to get people to do something creative. It's very much about doing the art and finding a different avenue to explore your feelings."
He says his approach is not so much a faith in alternative medicine as in less medicine. "I think as a rule our society is over-therapised - we have too many therapies. So this is specifically not art therapy. It's about learning creative skills." Opher began offering art classes three years ago with backing from the Learning Community project, part of a national initiative to promote skills in regeneration areas.
The use of the arts in primary care is under-researched and although he evaluated the initial impact of his experimental classes at the surgery, Opher stresses that this was not a formal research project.
But when he referred patients with anxiety or stress-related disorders to art classes, he noticed that for some the number of surgery visits reduced and there were discernible significant improvements in their mental health. Many patients commented that doing the art sessions allowed them to concentrate on a specific task, which helped them to forget their anxieties, while they were also able to socialise and make new friends.
Today Opher and his fellow GPs, nurses and mental-health workers routinely refer certain patients to Evans, who takes a room at the clinic every Wednesday morning.
They tend to be those patients whom medicine cannot help - people suffering from anxiety, depression and bereavement; the "worried well" or the socially isolated - although sometimes patients with chronic illnesses are also referred.
After a half-hour taster class, they can then carry on with one-to-one art lessons before having the option of joining a group. Many patients graduate on to classes at the local Prema Arts Centre or those run by nearby Stroud College.
One such patient is 37-year-old Sally Hayward. She has been disabled and has suffered from a catalogue of illnesses since she was knocked down and seriously injured while crossing the road at the age of 11.
During art classes at the clinic, she still cannot use the colour red because it brings back the trauma of her accident. Hayward has spent the past 14 years on antidepressants, but now hopes art will help wean her off them. She is about to move on to beginners' art and IT courses at college.
"This scheme has helped me no end," she says. "It gives you inspiration and you don't have to think about it - you're just there with a blank piece of paper."
Along the way, Opher has encountered a good deal of resistance. "If anything has held us back, it's been the attitude of the medical profession - the belief that it's a waste of time and not helpful to patients," he says.
But he says the expansion of the scheme to other surgeries and the response from his patients show that it is becoming accepted. Not so long ago, one patient who was finding it difficult to cope after suffering a bereavement contacted the surgery. "Instead of wanting to see a doctor, she said 'I think I might need to see the artist.' So I think there has been a subtle change in how people see the service."
