Daisy Fancourt on Art Cure: ‘If a drug had the same benefits as the arts, we’d take it every day’

I can pinpoint the specific comment that made me want to pursue a career researching the health benefits of the arts. I was fresh out of university, working in the NHS and managing the performing arts program at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. A pianist had just finished playing in the dementia ward and a relative of a patient came up to me: “What a great entertainment program you are organizing.”

It was kindly meant – she had enjoyed the session. The fact is that I myself already knew that the hospital’s art program was not just entertainment. Far from it. During this singing session, I had seen a patient who did not remember the members of her family who visited her sing perfect lyrics for The White Cliffs of Dover and then discuss his childhood. Earlier in the day I had seen in the accident and emergency department a burned child who did not need morphine once the theater troupe began their performance, a premature baby who cried inconsolably and refused to eat but who calmed down and started feeding as soon as his mother started singing, and a man who had had a stroke whose walking suddenly increased in speed and symmetry when we put headphones on him. Yes, the arts program was enjoyable and a welcome alternative to television for many patients. But I was able to see every day the tangible and significant effects that the arts had on patients’ health. And I wanted to understand how and why these effects occurred – what was happening in our brains and bodies. So I left the hospital to find the answers.

For over a decade, I have worked as a psychobiologist and epidemiologist, studying the impact of the arts on our health. And the results from research studies – mine and others from around the world – are becoming more and more exciting. When we pick up a book, listen to a song, dance at a party, or engage in a craft activity, we activate biological processes throughout the body that support various aspects of our health. We activate reward networks in our brains that increase levels of hormones such as dopamine, involved in mood and pleasure. We modulate the activity of our autonomic nervous system, leading to a reduction over time in our heart rate and blood pressure. We see reduced levels of stress hormones in our endocrine system and inflammation in our immune system. We even change the expression of our genes, reducing those involved in the stress response and increasing those involved in beneficial cognitive processes like neurogenesis.

If we can maintain regular engagement in the arts over months and years – participating in the arts or attending performances and cultural events – we may see widespread physiological changes over the longer term. We see an increase in gray matter volume in brain regions involved in memory, auditory processes and motor learning. We produce different patterns of proteins in our bodies that are linked to improved cognitive functioning and reduced risk of depression and infection. It even seems like we’re staying biologically “younger” longer: New studies just emerging, using brain clocks, epigenetic clocks, and physiological aging clocks, all of which combine different types of biological data to tell us whether we’re aging faster or slower than our chronological age, reveal that artistic engagement predicts a younger biological age.

All of these changes can add up and have significant effects on our overall health. People regularly engaged in the arts not only have higher levels of happiness, life satisfaction, meaning and purpose in their lives, but also have a reduced risk of developing depression, chronic pain, frailty, and even dementia. (And these relationships are not explained by people’s wealth, demographics, medical history, or other aspects of their behavior and lifestyle.)

These findings are collectively derived from randomized controlled trials, laboratory experiments, and large-scale epidemiological analyzes that observe the effects of the arts at the population level. And added to this is a huge body of research testing specific arts interventions in healthcare settings for particular patient groups, from singing lessons for people who have lost their speech following strokes, to magic camps aimed at improving hand function in children with cerebral palsy, to dance classes for people with Parkinson’s disease. Increasingly, we are witnessing confrontations that suggest that the arts might even be more more effective than some of the things we already recommend to people. Take pre-op anxiety: music seems to have the edge over anti-anxiety medications like benzodiazepines (not to mention fewer side effects).

Of course, it’s important to be clear about boundaries. Artistic engagement is certainly not a panacea. There are many examples where the arts even do harm, whether through deliberate militarization or poorly designed projects that have not properly considered issues such as safeguarding. I debunk a whole series of useless myths in Artistic healingfrom arts increasing babies’ IQ to destroying cancer cells. There are also many areas of this field that are still in development, where we have exciting pilot projects but await larger-scale trials. But now definitely seems like the time to lift the veil on this evidence base and talk about it.

Because if a drug had the same catalog of benefits as the arts, we would tell everyone about it, fight to get our hands on it, pay high prices, take it religiously every day, invest billions in research and development. So, what joy that the recommendations that I put forward in Artistic healing are not intended for a pill or an injection, but rather for something as enjoyable as going to a concert, joining a dance class, or reading a book – maybe even my book.

Daisy Fancourt is the author of Art Cure: The science of how the arts transform our health (Cornerstone Press), the March reading for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up to read with us here