The blues and anxiety can be cured at the museum.
Under the high ceiling of the former pharmacy school in Montpellier, converted into a contemporary art centre, André, Kevin and Ambre work the clay under the watchful eye of an artist.
Referred by their psychiatrist, they participate in a pilot program of
"art on prescription"
.
Of very different ages and life courses, but with depressive or anxiety episodes in common, these three patients, followed by the psychiatric emergency and post-emergency department (Dupup) of the Montpellier University Hospital, were not particularly interested in art so far.
But they nevertheless respected this particular treatment to the letter, for the space of a few weeks.
For the Mo.Co, the city's center for contemporary art, and the university hospital's psychiatry department, the
"conviction"
is shared: there is an
"urgent need to raise public awareness of the benefits of artistic commitment for mental health”
, insists Professor Philippe Courtet, from the Montpellier University Hospital.
Unprecedented in France, this project, inspired by experiments carried out in Belgium, Canada or the United Kingdom, has one ambition,
"to get patients out of the hospital by prescribing art for them"
, adds the professor.
"It liberates, it liberates enormously
," confides with a smile Ambre Castells, a 17-year-old high school student, pouring paraffin into a clay mold:
"When I'm here, it's as if everything that could make me potentially bad start”
.
Kevin Gineste, 23, has seen his
"natural anxiety subside"
.
"You can go see psychologists, but the best thing is to do things with my hands, to externalize what I have in me"
, he says, delighted to have met
“people with the same type of problems”
and now ready to
“go to the museum more often”
.
Break the isolation
“It's a workshop around soft, malleable materials, which deform and change from solid to liquid state, in contact with the hand. This allows you to immerse yourself in the experience”
, explains visual artist Suzy Lelièvre while observing it.
By their side, wearing a white apron to avoid getting dirty, André Broussous, 60, is delighted to have this time
"improved"
his
"way of using (his) hands"
, after having been initiated into the year to bodily expression, under the aegis of dancer Anne Lopez.
“Choreography gave me the art of fitting into a group, which was not easy at first, as well as greater confidence in my way of expressing myself,
"Mental health disorders, such as depression, lead to social isolation and a lack of self-esteem, which being in a group helps to break"
, underlines Philippe Courtet, himself passionate about art. contemporary.
"Here, it is not artists who go to patients, but patients who go to the museum, meet artists and enter their world"
, insists Elodie Michel, another expert in psychiatry from the CHU.
Read alsoWhy does art therapy do us good?
In 2022, this program involved three groups of around ten patients.
On the program: one-month artistic journeys, combining visits to exhibitions and artistic practice workshops.
At each session, they were accompanied by a fine arts student and an intern in psychiatry, notably in charge of the scientific evaluation of the project.
Entirely free for participants,
"art on prescription"
is funded by the Mo.Co, the Regional Health Agency, the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (Drac), as well as the city and metropolitan area of Montpellier, which has within its walls the oldest faculty of medicine in the world still in operation.
“We hope that this program (can) be extended to all and be the subject of
, pleads the director of the Mo.Co, Numa Hambursin, stressing that in Canada, treating physicians can already prescribe up to 50 museum visits per year to their patients.
