Scientists find that doing arts and crafts can improve your mental health just as much as doing a job CNN

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Walking into my grandmother’s house, I watch her hands move in a rapid knitting motion as the stitches stretch from her knitting needles. She has side-knitted blankets, scarves and ponchos, stitched with carefully selected color schemes and patterns made from wool yarn. She donates these blankets to children’s hospitals and orphanages.

Her favorite hobby is creating. She is always creating, be it knitting, coloring, scratch art or more recently gem art. These activities provide her with satisfaction and purpose in a way that is more fulfilling than work.

She passed on her love of arts and crafts to the rest of my family. After becoming an empty nester, my mother joined community theater groups and learned to draw. My younger cousin takes nature photos, and his dad (my uncle) has a comedy podcast with voice actors. My twin brother and I sang in college – it kept us sane while balancing our heavy academic workloads.

We thought it was good for our health, and we were right. Past research has shown that drawing reduces the body’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

“Getting involved with arts and crafts is accessible and affordable. Alternatives like knitting and drawing require very few tools and can be active and creative activities,” said Dr. Helen Keys, cognitive psychologist and head of Anglia Ruskin University’s School of Psychology and Sport Science, in an email.

Now, a new study by Keyes and fellow researchers found that engaging in creative activities can significantly boost well-being by providing meaningful spaces for expression and achievement.

Although prior studies have shown that arts and crafts can be therapeutic for people with mental health conditions, the general population has been less studied, according to the study, recently published in Frontiers in Public Health.

That’s why they sampled members of the undiagnosed general population to see how arts and crafts contribute to well-being and reduce the effects of isolation in everyday life.

The team used data from a major national survey in the UK between 2019-2020 to investigate how creative activities affect life satisfaction, controlling for variables that affect well-being such as gender, age group, health, employment status and bereavement. Researchers analyzed a sample of 7,182 participants (aged 16 and over) living in England from the annual Taking Part survey conducted by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which explores how the public engages with these activities.

“We kept our analysis broad for arts and crafts, not focusing on specific hobbies, because we know that people’s preferences vary and will find crafts or creative activities that work best for them,” Keyes said.

More than 37% of survey respondents confirmed that they had participated in at least one yachting activity in the past year. They were also asked about their employment status, their health, their sense of life as worth living, how often they feel lonely and their levels of happiness, anxiety and life satisfaction.

Participants’ reported happiness, life satisfaction, and sense of worth in life were positively associated with participation in arts and crafts, but arts and crafts were not associated with reduced anxiety or loneliness, which warrants further investigation. Additional studies are needed to examine the social aspects of creative activity, the researchers said.

“All forms of art can be beneficial in promoting mental health. Benefits include: increased self-esteem, reduced anxiety/stress, improved communication and fostered creativity,” said Dr. Frank Clark, a psychiatrist and poet at Prisma Health, via email. Clark was not involved in the study.

Arts and Crafts for Public Health

Researchers suggested that arts and crafts could improve public health.

“Governments and national health services could consider funding and promoting or socially recommending these activities for at-risk populations, as part of a promotion and prevention approach to well-being and mental health,” Keys said. “Connecting with architecture is a relatively easy thing to introduce into your life.”

Crafting provides an opportunity for a sense of achievement and expression.

“A sense of mastery is important to well-being, and the sense of mastery associated with creating and making art is innate. That is, people can see their progress and be proud of what they are producing,” Keyes said via email.

If you don’t think you’re artistic or creative, Clark has four suggestions for tapping into your creative side: Reframe your thinking to be optimistic about your creative potential; Don’t be afraid to take risks to try a new activity; Develop relationships with people in a creative space that interests you; And think about what you did creatively as a child and do it again.

A cheap option for creativity is coloring. Although some may perceive coloring as an activity for children, “I love adult coloring books and encourage everyone to embrace their inner child,” Clark said. “Coloring is an example of a mindfulness activity that has many health benefits. It helps foster social connection, improve concentration and foster creativity.

When you are creative, anything is possible. “Creativity has the power to foster resilience, restoration and reconciliation,” he said. “It is an anti-stimulant that helps provide a sense of meaning and purpose for humanity.”