Creative Arts Activities as a Resource for Children and Adolescents with Mental Disorders? Results and Reflections from Two Pilot Projects in Salzburg, Austria.

Children and adolescents living with mental health problems often experience stress, poor mood states, and emotional dysregulation which may influence their quality of life and wellbeing. Arts interventions have been discussed widely in adolescent psychiatry, but both research on the practicalities and individual responses in the target groups is rare.

Two arts pilot projects ‘Art is a doctor’ and ‘Find myself through Mozart’ were offered to young people at the University Clinic of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Salzburg, Austria. A goal of these projects was to enable art as therapy, as a healing and treatment process for the collective and the individual through singing, textile design, music, dance, acting, film/multimedia art, or clownery.

The objectives to be addressed in the two pilot studies have been the feasibility and the individual benefit of different types of creative art activities for young people with psychiatric crisis. Study 1 quantitatively analyzed the impact on psychological (mood, wellbeing, quality of life), neuroendocrine (salivary cortisol), and immune (salivary immunoglobulin A) responses, and Study 2 qualitatively investigated the narrative feedback of adolescent psychiatric patients who participated in workshops around the opera “Idomeneo” by W.A. Mozart.

The preliminary results suggest that music and arts activities may provide benefits for young people with mental health problems. However, substantial heterogeneity exists in current evidence and reports included both negative and positive responses, but also varied in specific content. In most cases, the sex of the respondee and previous arts participation showed no systematic influence. Participants were sensitive to the nature of the program, indicating individual preferences of the form and content in each art activity. We conclude that multi-faceted arts programs for young people undergoing psychiatric treatment are advantageous to meet individual preferences, elicit joy and be experienced as a welcome distraction. Moreover, our results suggest that both quantitative and qualitative methods are well suited to capture the wide range of responses to arts offerings in adolescent psychiatric patients. Furthermore, our results give an indication that multi-faceted arts program for adolescents undergoing psychiatric treatment can serve as enriching additional offer. However, major methodological challenges in setting up a controlled study with a larger group of young mental health patients in a clinical setting exist.