Chronic illness can take a huge toll on one’s life. Needless to say, medical treatments are paramount to treating and managing chronic illness, but art therapy and other creative activities can be incorporated into home care to benefit patients’ lives as well, not only as outlets for the individual to express their personal experiences and feelings but also as therapeutic outlets. In this article, I’ll touch on the roles played by art therapy and other creative activities in helping treat chronic illness, how these activities can be adjusted to incorporate into home care, and how they can benefit individuals.
The Role of Creative Outlets in Chronic Illness Management
Creative activities are wide-ranging but encompass the arts, music, drawing, painting, writing, and more, as well as crafting and other activities. Chronic illness is just one of many instances in which creative activities can be part of treatment and recovery.
1. Emotional Expression and Relief
- Releasing Emotional Anxiety: Engaging in creative activities provides a release for problematic emotions associated with chronic illness, such as frustration, sadness, or fear.
- Stress Reduction: Setting aside time for creative pursuits can help to lower stress, quiet your mind, and promote relaxation, reducing the emotional impact of living with a long-term health problem.
2. Enhancing Cognitive Function
- Mental Stimulation: Creative activities stimulate the brain, creatively enhancing brain function, and giving it mental exercises which can be healthy for the brain.
- Focus and concentration. Art and other arts-related activities promote concentration and help those affected manage symptoms of cognitive decline, including brain fog.
3. Promoting Physical Well-Being
- Fine-Motor Skills: Painting, knitting, or any other hobby that requires living by one’s hand can improve fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, which can all be useful to people whose grasp has been lessened.
- Sensory Engagement: Arts stimulate the senses in ways that encourage comfort and invigoration.
Art Therapy in Home Care
Art-making can be used in a healing context called art therapy. Art therapy improves mental and emotional well-being, and positive outcomes have also been documented for residents in sub-acute and extended-care residential settings. The delivery of art therapy through home care could also be adapted to individuals’ preferences.
1. Personalized Art Therapy Sessions
- Individualized Activities: Art therapy sessions can be tailored to the preferences and skills of the individual and may involve drawing, painting, sculpture, or collage-making.
- Therapeutic goals: Depending on the disorder, art therapists and patients work together to find a therapeutic goal such as reducing anxiety, increasing self-esteem, or working through a loss.
2. Benefits of Art Therapy
- Art Therapy. II. Discover your emotions/expressions: As we experience the process of creating our artwork, we enter our feelings/expressions. Working with art materials provides a non-verbal means of communication to express emotions and feelings. This form of expression could be particularly beneficial for clients who have difficulty communicating through words.
- Self-expression: Exploring identity and achievement through art keeps illness in perspective, fostering resilience.
3. Implementing Art Therapy at Home
- Materials and Space: Have the proper tools for art-making available and a space for it to happen. Example: having drawing material, painting paints, paintbrushes, and protective covers handy.
- For non-professionals, guide and support your loved one in ways that make the process fun and engaging. Offer support in helping them pick their mediums and colors, set up the space, and encourage positive engagement during the art-making process. Then, respectfully collect the art supplies and clean up.
Other Creative Outlets for Chronic Illness Patients
Art therapy is one option, but other creative outlets can be useful as well. Adding creativity to home care can provide other kinds of therapeutic benefits.
1. Music Therapy
- Listening to music: some forms of music-based therapy involve listening to instrumental or vocal music that may be especially calming and uplifting and may help reduce anxiety, improve mood, and provide comfort.
- Playing musical instruments: Playing even moderately complex musical instruments is good for us and is empowering.
2. Writing and Journaling
- Expressive Writing: Journaling or creative writing can facilitate processing. When you put pen to paper, your emotions have a place to go.
- Such things can be useful in promoting emotional well-being: Memory Books: Compile a scrapbook, photo album, or memory book to reflect on pleasurable experiences. Store it in a place that is difficult to access.
3. Crafting and Hobbies
- Knitting and crocheting: Relaxing. Creates a finished product. Improves fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
- DIY projects: small, artsy DIY projects that are not difficult to pull off. This could be something like an origami or scrapbooking project, decoration, or small home repair work.
4. Gardening
- Indoor gardening/houseplants: Looking out onto a patio full of blooms isn’t always possible, especially for physically challenged individuals indoor gardening, or tending to plants kept inside your own home, could be a welcome activity: it provides some connection with nature but can be done in small doses. The same could be said for becoming responsible for indoor pets such as hamsters or birds.
- Gardening has therapeutic benefits: it leads to reduced stress and improved mood, as well as gentle physical exercise.
Practical Tips for Integrating Creative Outlets into Home Care
Here are some practical tips for introducing creative outlets into the home care of patients with chronic illnesses:
1. Assess Interests and Abilities
- Personal Preferences: Use the client’s interests, aptitudes, and natural abilities to guide selections of creative activities.
- Physical Limits: Take into account your physical limitations in choosing and adapting activities to fit your comfort and safety.
2. Set Up a Comfortable Environment
- Space: Set aside a specific time and space with adequate lighting and comfort that can be reached easily without facing unnecessary obstacles and distractions.
- Materials and tools: Give your colleagues access to the material and the tools they will require, and make sure they are all stored in the same place.
3. Encourage Regular Participation
- Routine Integration: Bear a part of the creative activity load by integrating it into a regular schedule so it will be experienced by and have a lasting impact on all at least one to two times per week.
- Gentle encouragement: encourage supportive participation while being respectful of patient autonomy, pace, and preferences.
4. Monitor and Adapt
- Monitor responses (ie, track progress). Track how the individual is both engaged by and responds to the arts experience(s) and adapt accordingly, as needed, to their immediate response and longer-term progress.
- Be flexible: Knowing what to do does not mean knowing how to do it. No activity is set in stone. It is important to discover new activities or adapt existing ones to maintain engagement, capitalize on current strengths, or address emerging needs or limitations.
Addressing Challenges and Overcoming Barriers
Adding play practices to home care might not be straightforward. Possible barriers include a lack of materials or resistance to participation. Here are some strategies for overcoming common hurdles:
1. Resource Limitations
- Low-Cost Options: Use what you can afford, such as low-cost or homemade art supplies and materials. Many of our creative activities require very few materials.
- Find Community Resources: These might be free or cheap opportunities to get creative through local art centers or online programs.
2. Resistance to Participation
- Phased Implementation: Initiate creative activities gradually, building up gradually over time rather than introducing the individual to an overwhelming number of creative activities all at once. This will facilitate adjustment.
- Talk Interests: Talk about the individual’s interests to find out more about the things that might interest them and increase their likelihood of engagement.
Art therapy and other creative outlets provide omnibeneficial improvements in emotional state, coping, and self-esteem, as well as cognitive improvements and even physical benefits, such as pain relief. By incorporating such activities into the process of home care, caregivers can provide holistic support to people with a chronic illness, one that is augmentative to and complementary to the treatments being offered by clinical care teams. In sum, with individualized plans of action, thoughtful preparation, and consistent encouragement, creative outlets can play transformative roles in the quality of life of people who live with a chronic disease.
