Art Therapy — A Link to Mental Health
By: The Little Art
Tags: Arts Education, Art Therapy, Mental Health, Youth, Stories

Contributed by Saira Nagi

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Prioritizing your mental health can be a battle but it is critical to monitor it just like our physical health due to its long term effects which can alter one’s fate. Mental illness can be only be cured with self expression. A person suffering from psychotic problems has to get motivation in life. Art therapy helps treat mental illness. Creating art helps you acknowledge and recognize the feelings that have been lurking in your subconscious state. Unlike physical working of your body it exercises your mind to think out of the boundary they are struggling with. Art and creativity fills your thoughts with colours helping in relieving stress, depression, anxiety and other mental problems. It widens your thinking about the meaning of life. Art helps you escape the daily matters of life and makes you acknowledge that your imagination and thoughts can be painted with more than just seven colours of a rainbow. As quoted by Shakespeare in Hamlet:

“There are many more things between heaven and earth than are dreamt in your philosophy.”

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Over the past decade, health psychologists have cautiously been looking of how arts might be used in a variety of ways to heal emotional injuries. When you become creative you go beyond the limits of your usual thoughts which in turn enable you to become a problem solver. It activates your spontaneous thinking. Art and creativity in other words are a strength of wisdom that holds much value to promote emotional healing. Getting involved in art programs whether it be drama , photography, dance, painting or performance deviates your thoughts from the negativity of life. It changes the course if your mind and makes you aware of your capabilities. It plays a major role in creating self awareness as it brings about the activities that you find joy in. When someone starts working on a project they consider the various aspects of life which effect their work and builds in them motivation to carry it on.

Art boosts self confidence as you cone to know about the art of self expression which is the only way that can lighten one’s heart. Instead of locking yourself in a four walled room, surround yourself with inspirations that give you the motivation of life. I believe art is an effective stress management tool which helps you to deal and relive the load of life. Try throwing some paint at a wall and see what it leads to be. It’ll feel as if you let go off the negative energy of life. This negative energy that hovers over people is the thing that brings about mental problems that overcomes the livelihood of a person. Art aids communication of such people to relieve their psychological problems which cannot be expressed in words.

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Creating art in my opinion gives people time to heal on their own. For example, colouring is a very relaxing activity. It brings about the fact that as we fill colour in black and white drawings on paper similarly if we put an effort in our life we can over one every hard situation. If we take the example of today coping with mental health in the midst of this catastrophe, the covid— 19 pandemic and the mental collapse, has proven as a challenge for many but if we see this was the time for us to discover our capabilities. More struggles are faced with the mental illness than other diseases which slow down life but art is something that tells a person that there is a chance of success and development in life. I believe art is a form of self care which gives us control over ourselves. It is a self affirming activity that deviates our thoughts from our daily life stress.

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Contributed by Saira Nagi

Get in touch: www.thelittleart.org