It’s not news to most of us that our environment can have an impact on our mood. A cloudy day. Working in a cubicle farm. Growing up in poverty.
But can it also impact our health?
There’s a growing body of research that suggests the beneficial effects of picking and hanging the “right” artwork in hospitals, to help healing and improve patients’ mood:
Nanda, who has a doctorate in architecture with a specialization in health-care systems and design, says scientific studies show that art can aid in the recovery of patients, shorten hospital stays and help manage pain. But she says it has to be the right art – vivid paintings of landscapes, friendly faces and familiar objects can lower blood pressure and heart rate, while abstract pictures can have the opposite effect.
Nanda and two university professors did a study at Houston’s St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital using two types of art. In the first group were images that had been proved to calm patients, including green landscapes, water scenes, cultural artifacts and emotionally expressive pictures of people. The second group contained abstract pieces. When asked which they preferred, most patients chose images from the first group.
Not surprising, since that opinion reflects most people’s opinion about those two groups of artwork in the real world. Ambiguous artwork, such as much abstract paintings, provokes anxiety in many people, while familiar scenes of people and the outdoors are more serene and something most people can identify with. The article theorizes that people feel more at ease with such paintings, allowing them to project their own feelings of uneasiness or anxiety onto them.
In April, their company helped refurbish the joint unit of Baylor Medical Center at Irving, Texas. The hallways, which were previously dull and outdated, are now lined with paintings of trees, flowers and fields. Patients trying to regain mobility after hip and knee surgeries are met with motivational pictures every 25 feet to keep them energized. These distance markers, adorned with inspirational quotes and pictures of plants, replaced plain pieces of tape that were used before the art was installed.
Can you imagine how simple and inexpensive making hospitals look, well, hospitable is, compared to all the fancy imaging equipment and latest micro-surgery tools? And yet, these components can be just as important to a patient’s recovery as taking the right pills at the right time. Sterile white hallways might make for a clean environment, but it does nothing for the needs of being human in such places. After all, hospitals aren’t technology clean-rooms — they are where we treat people. And people are emotional and social creatures who value the familiar.
Many psychiatric hospitals could also do with a makeover. I’ve seen some pretty drab and depressing looking inpatient facilities in my time, places where healing one’s emotional hurts seems as unlikely as growing a flower without light.
Of course artwork isn’t going to heal anybody’s wounds, but it can help speed the healing process after-the-fact.
Read the full article: Medical units display art to help patients feel better
4 comments
Hospital and medical facilities can look (and feel) rather cold and impersonal. I hope more of them will come to realize the effects of simple moves like decor can help to make patients feel better and recover faster. Thanks for the great info!
Wow. It’s really too true- while I was involuntarily admitted into the hospital for three weeks, I was overjoyed to see a beautiful wall mural painting when I was finally allowed off bed rest. I took pictures with it, and spent most of my time just staring at it. So, this article totally rocks. 🙂
psychological environment is quite important to recovery. we have all read about how useful placebos can be and other psychosomatic issues. this reportage is consistent with that.
what i found particularly interesting here is the choice of art that the researchers chose to write about and why. abstract art is repudiated and landscapes and florals are encouraged. that is reasonable. but what is not reasonable is that this is assigned to an issue of ‘taste.’ i won’t digress into a discussion of aesthetics here and why the researchers might not be qualified to opine about taste.
i will stipulate that that many people in mental healthcare facilities are understandably impaired so they don’t need art which challenges them nor provokes (and confuses) them in spite of the fact that this is an important art function.
challenging art can be therapeutic even if not in a hospital setting because it can stimulate intellectual or emotional growth and it says something about the human condition. and validating the researcher’s artistic opinions with the presumed popularity of those opinions by say that ‘it’s what most people want disregards the failure of larger art education in texas and this country. i don’t think hospital Dietitians will add sugar, salt and fat to food because butter as an example of comfort foods is a beloved ingredient, so why is this a defense in the scientific selection of art by medical researchers?