Have you done anything creative today?

Research shows that creativity boasts remarkable mental health benefits, including emotion regulation, cognitive flexibility, and social connectedness (Jean-Berluche, 2024).

Whether you’re painting, writing, playing music, or making a craft, art can provide imaginative ways to express ideas and feelings, a process that can be therapeutic. The important thing is to focus on the process, not the product, in order to tap into the full mental health benefits of art (Kumar et al., 2024).

One study found that both active (e.g., painting) and passive (e.g., walking around an art museum) engagement with the arts consistently activates neural circuits in the brain associated with emotion regulation, offering a glimpse into the mechanisms underlying the association with art and better mental health (Barnett & Vasiu, 2024).

Daisy Fancourt, PhD, Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology, and Head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at University College London, has focused her research on the connection between the arts and health. In her new book, Art Cure, she shares insights from her research findings on art and mental health and offers tips on practicing creativity in the same way we prioritize diet and exercise for better health.

Heather Rose Artushin: Share a bit about your background and what inspired you to write Art Cure.

Daisy Fancourt: I’ve worked as a scientist researching how the arts affect our health for 15 years. But when I tell people what I do, they’ve rarely heard about the evidence base—it has remained this bizarrely well-kept secret.

People often talk about their own experiences of feeling happier or more relaxed when they engage in the arts, but they are often unaware that there is this incredible evidence base comprising thousands of studies using neuroimaging, physiological monitoring, blood samples, wearable sensors, big........

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