Creative Arts Therapies in Mental Health during Pandemics
Summary
Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) encompass a range of expressive modalities—art, music, drama, dance and movement—applied within a therapeutic framework to support psychological well-being. During pandemics, CATs have played a vital role in mitigating stress, anxiety, depression and social isolation arising from lockdowns and social distancing. Practitioners have rapidly adapted face-to-face interventions into remote formats, embracing telehealth platforms to sustain continuity of care. Group workshops and individual sessions alike have harnessed creative expression to foster resilience, enhance emotion regulation and re-establish social connections under restrictive conditions. Across diverse cultural settings, initiatives have demonstrated that CATs can deliver accessible, cost-effective support to vulnerable populations—students, healthcare workers, older adults and those with pre-existing mental health conditions—while generating new insights into digital delivery and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Research from Nature Portfolio
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Creative Arts Therapies in Mental Health during Pandemics publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in creative arts therapies in mental health during pandemics across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Creative Arts Therapies: Therapeutic approaches using artistic modalities to support emotional expression, self-exploration and mental health.
Telehealth: Remote delivery of therapeutic services via digital communication platforms.
Group cohesion: Sense of unity and mutual support experienced by participants within a therapeutic group.
Positive affect: Experience of positive emotions such as joy, interest and contentment during or after an intervention.
References
- Alternative mental health therapies in prolonged lockdowns: narratives from Covid-19. Health and Technology (2021).
- New developments during the COVID-19 pandemic: Drama therapy as an online psychological intervention tool. Frontiers in Psychology (2022).
- From art to insight: The role of a creative arts therapies group workshop on college students' well-being, self-awareness, and loneliness. The Arts in Psychotherapy (2024).
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