Mar 30
“A virtual pilot study to investigate how music therapy can improve the mental health of healthcare workers has been launched by Simon Fraser University and Music Heals. The study will focus on the healing effects of music on healthcare workers who are at a higher risk of developing PTSD, trauma, depression and other mental health disorders.
Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has added to their workload, increased stress and mental health concerns for healthcare professionals.”
…read more at”
Mar 23
Artists in Healthcare are delighted and grateful for the Zita and Mark Bernstein Family Foundation’s gift to fund George Bajer-Koulack’s music at Misericordia Health Centre. George is able to play inside, fully PPE trained, for residents, making a profound difference in their quality of life with his joyful, engaging presence. Our sincere thanks for this most meaningful gift.
Feb 05
“Music can improve mood, decrease pain and anxiety, and facilitate opportunities for emotional expression. Research suggests that music can benefit our physical and mental health in numerous ways. Music therapy is used by our hospice and palliative care board-certified music therapist to enhance conventional treatment for a variety of illnesses and disease processes – from anxiety, depression and stress, to the management of pain and enhancement of functioning after degenerative neurologic disorders.”
“Max Lerman, Hospice and Palliative Care Music Therapist from Spiritual Care and Music Therapy at NorthShore, highlights some of the benefits music has on health and well-being:
It’s heart healthy. Research has shown that blood flows more easily when music is played. It can also reduce heart rate, lower blood pressure, decrease cortisol (stress hormone) levels and increase serotonin and endorphin levels in the blood.”
Read more by clicking the link!
Jan 26
Jan 20
BBC culture
“What is the key to creativity, and how does it help our mental health? Beverley D’Silva speaks to Artist’s Way author Julia Cameron and others about ‘flow’, fear and curiosity.
Creativity, according to Maya Angelou, is a bottomless pit: “The more you use it, the more you have,” said the novelist. “Creativity is intelligence having fun,” is a phrase often attributed to Einstein. While advertising supremo David Ogilvy came at it from a business perspective: “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative”. We know creativity is alive in all fields of life, from medicine to business and agriculture. But the word – which derives from the Latin creare, to make – is most often associated with the arts and culture, and is believed to have first appeared in the 14th-Century literary work, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.”
Leonardo Da Vinci Painting The Mona Lisa By Cesare Maccari
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210105-why-being-creative-is-good-for-you
Read more by clicking the link above.
Jan 13
Medicine musica: the eighteenth-century rationalization of music and medicine
Daisy Fancourt
London, United Kingdom
Instruments de musique, 1770 Anne Vallayer-Coster Musée du Louvre, Paris
“Legends of music’s healing powers on both the mind and the body are estimated to go as far back as Paleolithic times, when music was believed to be a magic that could drive away the angry spirits that caused illness.
It wasn’t until the beginnings of learned medicine in the Greek-Roman, Arabic, Indian, and Chinese traditions that theories of music’s medicinal qualities began to be recorded. But from here on, they became a popular topic for discussion. In the Greek tradition alone, the Mycenean god Pajawo of 2000 BC used holy song to cure disease, and Apollo combined roles as healer and musician.
And even amongst mere mortals, The Odyssey told of the bleeding of Odysseus’s wounds from a wild boar only being stopped with a musical incantation; and the poet Pratinas in the 6th century BC recorded a plague in Sparta being quelled by the music of the composer Thaletas.”
Read more at the link above!
Jan 06
Painting by Nil Sari depicting the treatment of an insane patient by musical therapy.
Ottoman Music Therapy
“Music has been used as a mean of therapy through the centuries to counter all kinds of disorders by various peoples. Physicians and musicians in the Ottoman civilization were aware of the music therapy in continuation of previous Muslim similar practices. There are numerous manuscripts and pamphlets on the influence of sound on man and the effect of music in healing, both in works on medicine and music. Ideas of Al-Farabi, Al-Razi and Ibn Sina on music were followed by several Ottoman physicians.”
from https://muslimheritage.com/ottoman-music-therapy/
Click on the link to read more!
Jan 05
Photo of Rebecca Baird’s art installation at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Please refer to Artists in Healthcare’s annual report to read about our Art in Hospital Donation program which has recieved $359,000 of donated art given to Manitoba hospitals over the last two years.
Dec 22
Dec 08
Click on the image to see the report:
AIHM Annual General Report for 2019 – 2020
