Breaking Down Barriers Between Medicine and the Creative Arts
This weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to attend a talk about art therapy and its neurological benefits as told through a neurologist’s experiences as his father grew into an artist while struggling with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Hearing Dr. Daniel Potts describe his father’s life and how their relationship grew in the midst of AD because of art and its therapeutic benefits was validation of the meaningful work being done everyday by my colleagues and other day programs across the country. If you’re in the Chicago area, an exhibit of Dr. Potts’ poetry alongside his father’s artwork can be viewed at The National Museum of Health and Medicine.
Even more exciting though, was a panel discussion that featured an art therapist and four neurologists, researchers, and medical doctors. For two hours, it was like stepping into an alternate universe in which the medical community embraced the creative arts therapies (CATs), fully endorsing their power to serve the emotional, social, and psychological needs of patients that medicine can’t meet alone. This was a place where I didn’t feel defensive and on advocate duty for music therapy; every professional on the panel “got it” and were researching or advocating for the CATs themselves. Why hasn’t the rest of the world caught up yet?
When I asked the panel what needs to happen for the rest of the medical community to embrace the creative arts as they did, I hadn’t anticipated some of the answers. Of course, the point of more and better research and data was made, but other, slower barriers still stand in the way of the CATs becoming the norm.
One doctor pointed out that medical school teaches almost nothing in the way of alternative and holistic therapies that can be prescribed. “The textbooks will need to be re-written, and this can be a slow process”, he said. Another doctor suggested that the medical community will start focusing on the expressive arts when patients begin requesting these therapies for themselves. Doctors are being urged to consider individualized treatment centered on patients, but may not know about music, art, drama, or dance movement therapies. If patients come to their doctors with a request to take part in creative modalities for rehabilitation and healing, physicians will start paying attention.
Dr. Potts talked about the need for medical students to gain empathy and experience with patients’ capacity to create, citing the Cognitive Dynamics partnership with University of Alabama. This program pairs honors students with people living with memory loss to preserve life stories through art making under the supervision of an art therapist. Hearing about programs like these get me excited about the future!
I had come into the talk expecting to learn something new about art therapy and the brain, but never expected to walk away optimistic. Yes, advocacy is a way of life for the music therapist, but our work and efforts are catching the attention of some in the medical community. While the “alternate reality” I stepped into may be years away from being the norm, it is heartening to know that we are on our way to collaborating for our clients’ benefit.