LOREM IPSUM MARCH 4, 2019

Art and Well Being!

How Art overall is a great tool to help shape the mind and
help people mentally and physically to lead a better life.

Art and
Mental
Well Being
"Art is not a
mirror to hold up
to society, but a
hammer with
which to shape it"
Leon Trotsky
Art has been here for
hundreds of
thousands of years.
All shown in different
ways and making
history as we know it. Now, many people of today don't realize the importance of art and not many
people tend to do it in their free time. Too busy or having something else to work on. Some people
think that art isn't important or doesn't have real benefits to them or other people. That art is just a
bunch of colors. Now what I say to that is no as art can help in so many ways mentally and
physically. It helps develop the mind and express untold emotions as well. It helps in therapy even
and help shape children's minds to be more creative and to think outside the box. With people now
starting to forget the values of art, people are missing out on something that could really help them
and others as well. Art overall is a great tool to help shape the mind and help people mentally and
physically to lead a better life.

How Art Helps
Children
Art class is extremely important for
children to help their creativity as well
over mental well being.
This is first show as every school usually has an
art class. It's very known and there's a good

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LOREM IPSUM
reason schools do that cause the school knows
the benefits of it. Second it's shown in recent
studies that children improve overall in art as
it's shown to positively affect social skills having
them improve in skills such as helping, sharing,
caring, and empathizing with others.. A parent
reporting that after singing to their child three
times a week or more are more likely that their
child has strong sophisticated social skills. Not
only does it help on a social level but as well on
a emotional level. This is shown in another
study when children were told to think of a past
negative event. Some were instructed to draw a
house to distract themselves and others were
told to draw the event. Through this study it
was shown that the children who distracted
themself with drawing a house had their mood
improve compared to the other children
(Gifford). And with that it concludes my first
point to why art helps a person overall.
Art helps mentally too!
My second point is to that art helps mentally
and helps through mental illness. First off their
are are therapy specifically for this type of field.
They are called arts and creative therapy. These
therapies include using art based activities in a
therapeutic environment. Different people will
have different experiences but the main goal of
this therapy is to give a safe place where people
won’t judge you, help people make better sense
of things, understand themselves better, find
ways to live with the pain, resolve complicated
feelings, and lastly but very most importantly
help people communicate hard and painful
feelings that can't be said though words
(mind.org). Secondly as Eric Jensen said in his
book “The systems they nourish, which include
our integrated sensory, attentional, cognitive,
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MARCH 4, 2019
emotional, and motor capacities, are, in fact,
the driving forces behind all other learning.” Art
helps mentally. As well in another article on the
University of Wisconsin health, a psychologist
named Shilagh Mirgain quoted saying “Awe has
many important implications for our well-
being.” And he then explained “Experiencing
awe can give us a sense of hope and provide a
feeling of fulfillment.” Many upon many other
medical related articles has as well proven this.
This shows overall that art helps with mental
health and the well being of a person overall
therefore I end my second point.
As well off that point Art
helps physically!
Art not only has the ability to help people
mentally but physically too! Now you may
wonder how that works as it's just art? How can
it help you physically? Now I'll show you how it
does. Studies in a Toronto University study took
from 200 young adults reported on a given day
the amount to which they were happy. They
then swabbed the inside of their mouth to test
their cytokines which showed improvement!
Now cytokines are chemicals needed in the
body to herd cells to the body's battleground to
fight trauma and infections. Now you may ask
how is art involved then? Well art makes people
happy and calm people down as shown in the
last paragraph. As Dr Dacher Keltner says, it as
show just with a walk in nature, beholding art,
losing self in music, has a direct influence upon
health and life expectancy. It shows that art can
help physically. Art can help with even the
deadliest of diseases. Cancer. One of the most
known diseases. Art can help with that too!
Studies have shown that art therapy and other
creative things can help cancer patients feel examples! I could tell you hundreds of them but
better. From a newspaper from the researchers sadly we don't have all day. Though this does
at the National Institutes of Health analyzed further my point that arts are very important to
how art therapy actually effected cancer people as it's also a main part of culture.
patients. The studies that were shown had over
1,500 participants and the results were very
very clear. Art therapy helped these patients
reduce anxiety, depression, and yes even
physical pain! It as well doing this improved the
quality of life they had too (Foster). Isn't that
amazing? These reasons clearly show that art
Conclusion!
can really help people physically and help
through tough times of pain. So throughout all the paragraphs it shows one
point over and over. That Art overall is a great
tool to help shape the mind and help people
Art is a major part of culture mentally and physically to lead a better life.
too! This is shown to help mentally, physically, and a
main part throughout culture. Through these it
Art is a big part of culture to many many people shows all you need to know that art is over all a
of this world. It's used as expression. This leads absolutely amazing tool to help you overall. I
straight onto my fourth point that not only art mean it helps people help battle cancer and
helps mentally and physically but it often used help through their struggle with mental illness.
to express culture as well. Many upon many As well is a very major part of any culture.
cultures use this to express their religion or Overall it's very clear to see that art helps
beliefs through drawings. This is shown people so much. I hope I was able to show you
throughout history from all the way from forty that. So why don't you give art a try if you
thousand years ago on cave walls made by haven't already? So really, what can you really
using only fingers to make a “pig-deer” like lose?
drawing (Vergano). That arts are a vast part of
culture. Art is not only just painting but forms
of dancing, poetry, drama, photography, and
fashion. We all know very well many cultures
all do this to show themselves. An example
being the day of the dead in Spain. This comes
up every Halloween we're people celebrate the
death of their loved ones. They do funky
makeup and costumes, hold parades and
parties, sing and dance, and make offerings to
lost loved ones. Arts are important for this as it
makes up the holiday with its bright dresses
and makeup as they dance and sing. The arts
are very important part of it. And this is only
one example out of many upon many of

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www.mind.org.uk/information-support/drugs-
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