Art workshops have ‘huge’ effect on seniors’ health
Participants in three-month hospital study went from mildly frail to vigorous
Research has already shown that participating in art workshops can improve seniors’ moods or sense of well-being, but a new study out of Montreal suggests a surprisingly positive effect on the physical health of seniors. Launched last December, the study measured the effect on 150 people aged 65 to 94 who participated in weekly painting and drawing workshops at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts over a three-month period. The participants were relatively healthy seniors, living in their own homes and not suffering from serious cognitive impairment or physical illness, although due to their age they were dealing with varying degrees of frailty. At the beginning of the study, the participants were rated according to their degree of frailty: severely frail, moderately frail, mildly frail, and vigorous. About half of the participants were in the “mildly frail” category. Rated again at the end of the three-month period of participating in weekly art workshops, 27 per cent of those in the “mildly frail” category had moved to the “vigorous” category. “This is an extraordinary result,” said Dr. Olivier Beauchet, professor of geriatrics at McGill University and director of the RUIS Centre of Excellence on Longevity, which is collaborating with the museum and the Jewish General Hospital on this research program. He said researchers were not surprised when results showed that participants’ self-rated sense of well-being improved during and after each workshop and that their self-assessed quality of life improved cumulatively over the three-month period. Those effects had been demonstrated in the past, through studies on art therapy on people suffering from various illnesses. But the scope of improvement in physical health on this relatively healthy elderly cohort was unexpected even by researchers in the field. “The size of the effect was huge,” Beauchet said. Participants rated their fragility using a set of 20 yes-or-no questions, such as whether they had gained or lost weight, whether they were taking more medications, ability to dress and bathe alone, and mood. The methods used for self-assessment have been scientifically verified and, for research purposes, are as reliable as doctor’s assessments, he said. While 49 per cent of the participants rated their health as “vigorous” at the beginning of the research, 76 per cent had attained that status by the end. He said the concrete effect of that improvement could mean seniors become more mobile and interactive in their lives, more willing to participate in family, which in turn preserves good health. “This study confirms that the effects (of participating in public art workshops) are multi-dimensional, that museums can be important actors in (illness) prevention, particularly in an aging population,” he said. Along with the study results, the Centre of Excellence on Longevity released a video Tuesday featuring former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre, now an ambassador to the Jewish General Hospital Foundation, interviewing Beauchet. The museum has been running a very popular program of free artistic workshops for seniors called Thursdays at the Museum for the past three years. So far, more than 14,000 people have participated in this program, which includes art and musical workshops, yoga and guided tours of the collections. Last month, the MMFA announced an innovative program that will allow physicians who are members of Médecins francophones du Canada to prescribe museum visits to some of their patients. The museum will offer free admission to those with prescriptions. The Museum of Fine Art is collaborating with a number of different research institutions in a bid to measure scientifically the effect of art on well-being. Research projects include a study of the effect of visits and workshops at the MMFA on people with eating disorders, on young people with psychiatric problems, on patients with cardiac arrhythmia, on those with Alzheimer’s, on those on the Autism spectrum, and on breast cancer patients and survivors.