The program includes art trips for a month, visits to exhibitions, and workshops to learn artistic practices
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Beneath the lofty roof of an old pharmacy college converted into a center for contemporary art in the coastal city of Montpellier in southern France, Andre, Kevin and Amber learn to make pottery under the watchful eyes of an artist. The three are sent by their doctor to take part in an experimental program that uses art as a means of psychotherapy.
These three patients differ in age and life course, but they share the same episodes of depression or anxiety, and they are followed up by the Department of Psychiatric Emergency and Post-Emergency at Montpellier University Hospital.
These three were not particularly interested in the arts in the past, but they followed the steps required of them in full as part of this unusual treatment that lasts a few weeks under the title “Art with a prescription”.
For the Mo.Co. of Contemporary Art Center in the city, and the university hospital’s psychiatry department, there is a common “conviction” that there is “an urgent need to raise public awareness of the benefits of artistic commitment to mental health”, according to Professor Philippe Courtet of the University Hospital Center in Montpellier.
This unprecedented project in France, inspired by previous experiences in Belgium, Canada and the UK, has one ambition, “to get patients out of the hospital by prescribing art to them”, according to Courtier.
“This liberates us powerfully,” says student Amber Castiel, 17, with a smile on her face, as she pours paraffin into a clay mold. “When I’m here, I feel like everything that might bother me dissipates,” she adds.
As for Kevin Genest, 23, he notes that his “natural anxiety is fading.” “Psychologists can be consulted, but the best thing is to do manual work, to bring out what’s inside of me,” he says, expressing his pleasure at meeting “people with the same problems,” and expressing his willingness to “go to the museum more frequently.”
Isolation break
“It’s a workshop regarding soft, flexible materials, which deform and transition from a solid to a liquid state, upon contact with the hand, allowing to engage in the experiment,” explains visual artist Susie Lelliver.
In addition to them, Andre Broseau, 60, is pleased this time to “improve” his way of using his hands, “following he began last year to learn the principles of physical expression, under the supervision of dancer Anne Lopez.
“Dance has given me the art of integrating into a group, which wasn’t easy at first, as well as more confidence in the way I express myself, to move myself,” he recalls.
“Here, it is not the artists who go to the patients, but the patients who go to the museum, meet the artists and enter their world,” confirms Elodie Michel, an expert in psychiatry at Montpellier University Hospital.
In 2022, this program included three groups of regarding ten patients. This includes month-long art trips, exhibition visits and workshops to learn artistic practices.
At each session, they were accompanied by a fine arts student and a psychiatry trainee, in particular responsible for the scientific evaluation of the project.
This experience is completely free for participants, funded by the Mo.Co Technical Center, the Provincial Health Agency, the Provincial Directorate for Cultural Affairs, as well as the city of Montpellier, which has the oldest still-service medical school in the world.
“We hope that this program will be extended to everyone and that it can be paid for through Social Security,” says Mo.Co Art Center director Numa Ambursen, stressing that in Canada, therapists can prescribe up to 50 museum visits a year for their patients.