Imagine your doctor prescribing you a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, or ballroom dancing classes or a weekly walk at the Arnold Arboretum.
That could come to fruition under a new program announced Thursday by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Atlanta-based Art Pharmacy Inc., which partners with health care providers and managed care plans to prescribe arts and culture to help improve a range of mental health issues.
“We know this initiative is effective preventive medicine and are excited that it will also provide a new revenue stream for cultural organizations, who will, for the first time, be compensated for the health benefits they provide,” Michael J. Bobbitt, executive director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, said in a statement.
Social Prescription,this is Adopted Introduced in the UK and more than a dozen countries around the world, the mental health programme is the practice of referring patients to community-based arts and culture organisations to address mental health issues and their underlying causes, such as stress, social isolation and loneliness. the study It suggests that non-clinical activities (visits to botanical gardens, pottery classes, gardening) may improve a person’s mental health and even lead to fewer doctor visits and hospitalizations.
The launch of the new program in Massachusetts officially recognizes the arts as a health care solution in the state, said Art Pharmacy CEO Chris Appleton.
“The idea of using arts as medicine is not new,” Appleton said, “but there is a growing movement in the United States to incorporate social prescriptions into the U.S. health care system.”
In fact, a similar trend is growing among American universities. The New York TimesReported in April Stanford University and Rutgers University-Newark have begun offering arts and cultural activities to students as part of the schools’ mental health services.
In addition to working with Massachusetts Medicaid and hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham Hospital, Art Pharmacy and the Massachusetts Cultural Council are continuing to build a network of arts and cultural organizations interested in participating in the program. To date, Art Pharmacy has received commitments from more than 300 organizations, including the Groton Hill Music Center. Council on AgingBerkshire Children’s Choir and Berkshire Community Choir, Dance ComplexDanforth Museum of Art, Korean Cultural Society of Boston, Latino Community Empowerment Center, The castle of our skinJacob’s Pillow, a Jamaica Plains group that celebrates black artistry in classical music, and Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell.
As an example, Appleton said a patient diagnosed with a health concern, such as anxiety, would be given a prescription for, say, 12 arts and culture items that would be sent to an Arts Pharmacy (as opposed to a traditional pharmacy like CVS or Walgreens), where a “care navigator” would create a patient profile based on the patient’s clinical and social needs, as well as arts preferences and experiences, and make recommendations for a series of activities from which the patient could choose.
“We know the arts have the power to heal, both physically and emotionally,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement. “Massachusetts is proud to once again be pioneering groundbreaking health care innovation with the nation’s first statewide arts prescription solution.”
Mark Shanahan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow us @Mark Ashanahan.
