How ‘lofty’ art can help the medical world reimagine mental health

Tan, Kai Syng and Asherson, Philip (2018) How ‘lofty’ art can help the medical world reimagine mental health.

Abstract

We are in the midst of a global mental health crisis, according to a recent review by the Lancet medical journal. Our “collective failure” to respond to this crisis results in “monumental loss of human capabilities and avoidable suffering”. The development of 20 antipsychotics and 30 antidepressants over the past four decades has not improved the morbidity or mortality of mental disorders. In England, mental illness costs £105.2 billion annually. People consider the stigma around mental health worse than the illness itself.

Evidently, to bring about policy and cultural change, we need to think outside the pillbox. A recent governmental report in the UK puts forward a robust argument for how the arts can “stimulate imagination and reflection” and “change perspectives”. Art therapy, for example, can improve conditions like dementia. But this report is concerned with the quality of the artistic activity “rather than that of the output”. It rejects art that is “lofty activity which requires some sort of superior cultural intelligence to access”.

But the quality of the artistic output is a salient part of transforming how we see mental health, if it is to stop being something shameful and negative. Art stimulates and changes perspectives because it engages and develops cultural intelligence. Surely different forms of art – including those of the “lofty” variety – must also play a role in rectifying our collective failure?

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Contributors

Author: Kai Syng Tan

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