UCLArts and Healing

Mission

The mission of UCLArts and Healing is to bring accessible, arts-based tools for mind-body healing to the community as a vehicle for empowerment and transformation.

We use two major strategies to achieve our goal:

• Affordable, experiential education to enable people to experience the healing power of the arts for themselves.
• Networking with health care professionals (including mental health professionals), educators, community workers, caregivers, and artists as well as the general public.
• Design, implementation, and evaluation of programs, particularly in educational and health care settings.

Program planning addresses the needs of those in the field, and involves partnerships with academic institutions, educational and health care institutions, community-based organizations, schools, professional organizations, and private industry. This is part of a larger endeavor to develop innovative ways of engaging youth, and those who work with youth, in constructive expression and self-reflection.

UCLArts and Healing is an outgrowth of collaboration with three entities: 1) the Arts and Healing Initiative, a non-profit organization, 2) the Salamander Fund, a non-profit foundation, and 3) the UCLA Pediatric Pain Program, which offers state-of-the-art medicine in combination with the regenerative power of complementary therapies to treat children suffering from chronic pain.

Background

As Director of Educational Outreach for the UCLA Pediatric Pain Program, I initiated UCLArts and Healing in October 2004 because the arts offer accessible, nonverbal and universal tools for facilitating emotional and physical health, and because the arts are often absent in medical and educational settings. While the arts themselves are healing, even greater value can be obtained from the arts when a therapeutic dimension is added. Those who use the arts as therapy work through metaphor by focusing on the process of expression and the self that is revealed through it. By reflecting on unconscious themes that emerge, the arts can heighten self-awareness, which allows for behavior change.1

The wide-range health value of the arts and the arts therapies is supported by a small body of well-done scientific studies, a larger body of case studies, and observations by experts. For example, the arts have been used to improve recovery from injury,2 mental function,2 pain,2-4 depression,4 stress,5-7 self-esteem,8 quality of life during hospice care,9 anxiety in normal medical care,10, 11 and medical procedures,12 substance abuse,13 child and adolescent behavior and development,14 immune function,15, 16 emotional trauma,17-19 and future risk of violence.20 A small meta-analysis of the effects of music therapy on children and adolescents showed medium to large positive effects that were highly significant, with greatest effects observed in behavioral and developmental disorders.14

Furthermore, arts therapies may have their greatest impact on youth. They do not bear the stigma of therapy and can accommodate the intensity of the adolescent experience. The work of youth tends to be autobiographical in nature, which renders the self-revelatory value of the arts therapies even greater.1 Identifying and addressing problems before the age of 10 may prevent lifelong aggression, substance abuse, and risky health behavior.22-31

In Year 1, UCLArts and Healing was subsidized by the Salamander Fund. We are now developing a self-sustaining and affordable, fee-based program.

Ms. Ping Ho, MA, MPH
Founder and Director, UCLArts and Healing
Director of Educational Outreach, UCLA Pediatric Pain Program

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