What Do We Know About Doctor-Prescribed Museum Visits?

Medical doctors in Brussels are prescribing museum visits to their sufferers who’re battling stress because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Museum remedy isn’t new and docs in different places, comparable to Montreal, have additionally been prescribing visits to the native artwork museum as remedy. Not all packages are the identical, although, however researchers have been finding out whether or not these interventions are efficient.

In September, Brussels metropolis councillor Delphine Houba announced that she deliberate to start out a 3 month trial to permit docs at a psychological well being unit of the Brugmann hospital to prescribe museum visits to their sufferers who have been affected by stress. With a prescription, sufferers can attend a number of taking part museums round Brussels as a part of their restoration from COVID-19-induced psychological well being issues.

The trial will run till the top of this 12 months, when will probably be re-evaluated, however comparable packages have been carried out in different places. Houba’s concept for the Brussels-based artwork intervention technique got here from an earlier initiative in Canada. 

In 2018, the Montreal Museum of Advantageous Arts and Médecins francophones du Canada began a program that allow docs prescribe their sufferers with a museum go to along with their different remedies. They bought a particular “prescription pad” with 50 sheets which they might give to any of their sufferers to get free entry to the Montreal Museum of Advantageous Arts.

In June 2019, Fortune reported that members within the Montreal program had at that time redeemed 185 of the prescriptions that had been handed out by docs. However there doesn’t appear to have been a scientific report but to summarize whether or not the system was deemed profitable.

Nevertheless, the Montreal Museum of Advantageous Arts has taken half in a number of different health-related tasks. One particularly, “Thursdays at the Museum”, has been formally documented in peer-reviewed scientific papers. On this venture, 150 members over the age of 65 took half in weekly interactive artwork actions on the museum. At a number of factors throughout the course of the 12 weeks of the examine, they answered a questionnaire about their well-being. Primarily based on their solutions, McGill College researchers decided that the artwork actions on the museum elevated the general temper and wellbeing of the folks that took half. 

Within the UK, an analogous examine known as “Museums on Prescription” ran from 2015 to 2017. This analysis venture additionally regarded on the psychological wellbeing of older individuals who took half in organised occasions at a museum. For this venture, the actions have been provided as a 10-week collection of occasions at seven completely different museums. Every museum provided one thing else, so it could possibly be interactive art-making workshops or behind the scenes conferences with curators, for instance. This examine, too, confirmed a constructive impact on wellbeing amongst individuals who participated within the museum actions. 

However each these research have been rigorously coordinated so that folks took half in organised and monitored occasions the place they have been instantly engaged with different members and the museum workers. It’s not the identical as merely sending somebody to a museum at no cost. Possibly it was the sense of being a part of a gaggle or being guided alongside actions that made the members within the museum research really feel higher – not essentially the act of “being within the museum”. So it’s exhausting to say whether or not merely prescribing a museum go to can have the identical impact.

Nonetheless, sending sufferers to a museum once they appear to want a distraction isn’t more likely to hurt them, even when it’s not clear whether or not it should work for everybody. Because the vice-president of Médecins francophones du Canada, Hélène Boyer, stated in an interview with CBC News on the launch of the museum prescription venture in Montreal “It is so uncommon in drugs that you just prescribe one thing and you don’t want to fret about all these side-effects (…).”

So in the event you get provided a free go to to the museum by your physician, take it and benefit from the artwork.