"The importance of arts in health care"

It might not be anything that any professional staff would be in the least bit concerned about, but I seek to draw wider attention to an issue which deeply troubles me.

It relates to an agenda which is becoming prevalent at Healthcare trusts, an agenda which is actively hostile to the very prominent and effective role which art and creativity has hitherto played in the lives of people who seek to make progress, restitution and an eventual recovery of their skills which have fallen into disuse as a result of incapacitating, severe mental ill-health and which needs the multi-disciplinary approach of skilled practitioners working therapeutically and remedially with patients to restore these lost abilities and re-engage with their talents in art, music, writing and related media engagement of a therapeutic nature.

Our chief executive makes great play of scientific finesse which does the professionals engaged in healthcare credit. But it is deeply unhelpful to devalue the contributions made by the applied talents and human skills of artists, whose gifts do not lie in laboratories but in more natural living settings, bringing genuine progress and lifting the spirits of a demoralised and besieged patient clientele.

I evidence my concern on recent developments which over the last five years have seen the Broad Street centre broken up and dissolved, leaving a dismantled community of therapy delivery which took many years to assemble, without a base for creative activity, rendering the relic of this which was the Social Inclusion and Well-being service non-functional and now under attack as many practitioners are now discarded and made redundant from giving service to their clients. While the out-come for this service is shameful, I believe it is the thinking behind under-valuing what the Arts can bring as a contribution to improving health as a vehicle for recovery which is greatly at fault.

I would urge the people who have such uninformed power over us to reconsider their actions before any further decimation of these services is brought to bear. We are individuals with individual talents and fortunately, we are not all the same. So the diversity of the services is vital to meet diverse needs and essential for many people who now feel under siege.

I hope that by bringing this to your attention we can foster a greater regard for all the hands which have manned the pumps of progress in mental healthcare.