MONTPELLIER: Under the high roof of a former pharmacy school in Montpellier (southern France), which has been converted into a center for contemporary art, Andre, Kevin and Amber work on clay under the eye of an artist. Their psychiatrist indicated that they were participating in an experimental program of “art by prescription”.
Of different ages and life cycles, but with common episodes of depression or anxiety, these three patients, followed by the Department of Psychiatric and Post-Emergency (Dupup) at Montpellier University Hospital, were not yet particularly interested in art.
However, they respected this special treatment to the letter for a few weeks.
For 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 to mental health,” insists Professor Philip Courtet, of the University Hospital Center (CHU). ) in Montpellier.
This unprecedented project in France, 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 to them,” adds the prof.
“It’s liberating, it’s tremendously liberating,” admits with a smile Amber Castells, a 17-year-old high school student pouring paraffin into a clay mold: “When I’m here, it’s as if everything might get me bad to begin with.”
Kevin Genesty, 23, has seen his “normal anxiety fade.” “We can go see psychologists, but the best thing is to do things with my own hands, to externalize what I have,” he says, happy to meet “people with the same kind of problems” and now ready “to go to the museum more often.
Break the isolation
“It’s a workshop on soft, elastic materials, which deform and transition from a solid to a liquid state, on contact with the hand. That allows you to absorb the experience,” explains visual artist Suzy Lelièvre as she observes.
For their part, dressed in a white apron to avoid getting dirty, Andre Brossos, 60, is pleased this time to “improve” the way he uses his hands, “having started in the year of physical expression, under the auspices of dancer Ann Lopez.
“The choreography gave me the art of blending into a group, which was not easy at first, as well as more confidence in the way I express myself, to move myself,” he recalls.
“The troubles of santé mentale, as me la dépression, engendrent of l’isolement social et a manque d’estime de soi, que le fait d’être in groupe permet de rompre”, souligne Philippe Courtet, lui-meme passionné d’art contemporary.
“Here, it is not the artists who go to the patients, but the patients who go to the museum and meet the artists and enter their world,” confirms Elodie Michel, another CHU psychiatrist.
In 2022, this program involved three groups of about ten patients. On the program: one month art trips, visits to exhibitions and workshops for artistic practice.
At each session, they were accompanied by a fine arts student and a psychiatry trainee, in particular responsible for the scientific evaluation of the project.
Completely free for participants, “l’art sur prescription” is funded by the Mo.Co, the Regional Health Agency and the Provincial Directorate for Cultural Affairs (Drac), as well as the city of Montpellier and the metropolitan area within whose walls the oldest medical school in the world is still functioning.
“We hope this program will be extended to everyone and compensated by Social Security,” said Mo.Co Director Numa Hamborsen, stressing that in Canada therapists can prescribe up to 50 museum visits a year to their museum. The patients.
