Promoting Health Through Creativity

This book is about redefining the value to health of creativity. Creativity derives from biological changes during human evolution as a tool that is needed for survival. The successful use of creativity generates feelings of pleasure and self-esteem that are beneficial to health. In particular, it can help depression. Current values do not give adequate importance to creativity, and the author challenges these values in this book. The book contains contributed chapters on a theory of creativity as an innate capacity, the therapeutic benefits of creativity, factors that encourage or inhibit creativity and current research on these, and accounts of creativity both as individual projects and as groupwork.

This open access book offers an overview of the beautiful, powerful, and dynamic array of opportunities to promote health through the arts from theoretical, methodological, pedagogical, and critical perspectives. This is the first-known text to connect the disparate inter-disciplinary literatures into a coherent volume for health promotion practitioners, researchers, and teachers. It provides a one-stop depository for using the arts as tools for health promotion in many settings and as bridges across communities, cultures, and sectors. The diverse applications of the arts in health promotion transcend the multiple contexts within which health is created, i.e., individual, community, and societal levels, and has a number of potential health, aesthetic, and social outcomes. Topics covered within the chapters include: Exploring the Potential of the Arts to Promote Health and Social Justice Drawing as a Salutogenic Therapy Aid for Grieving Adolescents in Botswana Community Theater for Health Promotion in Japan From Arts to Action: Project SHINE as a Case Study of Engaging Youth in Efforts to Develop Sustainable Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Strategies in Rural Tanzania and India Movimiento Ventana: An Alternative Proposal to Mental Health in Nicaragua Using Art to Bridge Research and Policy: An Initiative of the United States National Academy of Medicine Arts and Health Promotion is an innovative and engaging resource for a broad audience including practitioners, researchers, university instructors, and artists. It is an important text for undergraduate- and graduate-level courses, particularly in program planning, research methods (especially qualitative methodology), community health, and applied art classes. The book also is useful for professional development among current health promotion practitioners, community nurses, community psychologists, public health professionals, and social workers.

Over the past two decades, there has been a major increase in research into the effects of the arts on health and well-being, alongside developments in practice and policy activities in different countries across the WHO European Region and further afield. This report synthesizes the global evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being, with a specific focus on the WHO European Region. Results from over 3000 studies identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health, and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan. The reviewed evidence included study designs such as uncontrolled pilot studies, case studies, small-scale cross-sectional surveys, nationally representative longitudinal cohort studies, community-wide ethnographies and randomized controlled trials from diverse disciplines. The beneficial impact of the arts could be furthered through acknowledging and acting on the growing evidence base; promoting arts engagement at the individual, local and national levels; and supporting cross-sectoral collaboration.

"Includes access to Oxford Medicine Online"--Cover.

Martial Arts and Well-Being explores how martial arts as a source of learning can contribute in important ways to health and well-being, as well as provide other broader social benefits. Using psychological and sociological theory related to behaviour, ritual, perception and reality construction, the book seeks to illustrate, with empirical data, how individuals make sense of and perceive the value of martial arts in their lives. This book draws on data from over 500 people, across all age ranges, and powerfully demonstrates that participating in martial arts can have a profound influence on the construction of behaviour patterns that are directly linked to lifestyle and health. Making individual connections regarding the benefits of practice, improvements to health and well-being – regardless of whether these improvements are ‘true’ in a medical sense – this book offers an important and original window into the importance of beliefs to health and well-being as well as the value of thinking about education as a process of life-long learning. This book will be of great interest to a range of audiences, including researchers, academics and postgraduate students interested in sports and exercise psychology, martial art studies and health and well-being. It should also be of interest to sociologists, social workers and martial arts practitioners. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315448084, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This open access textbook represents a vital contribution to global health education, offering insights into health promotion as part of patient care for bachelor’s and master’s students in health care (nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, radiotherapists, social care workers etc.) as well as health care professionals, and providing an overview of the field of health science and health promotion for PhD students and researchers. Written by leading experts from seven countries in Europe, America, Africa and Asia, it first discusses the theory of health promotion and vital concepts. It then presents updated evidence-based health promotion approaches in different populations (people with chronic diseases, cancer, heart failure, dementia, mental disorders, long-term ICU patients, elderly individuals, families with newborn babies, palliative care patients) and examines different health promotion approaches integrated into primary care services. This edited scientific anthology provides much-needed knowledge, translating research into guidelines for practice. Today’s medical approaches are highly developed; however, patients are human beings with a wholeness of body-mind-spirit. As such, providing high-quality and effective health care requires a holistic physical-psychological-social-spiritual model of health care is required. A great number of patients, both in hospitals and in primary health care, suffer from the lack of a holistic oriented health approach: Their condition is treated, but they feel scared, helpless and lonely. Health promotion focuses on improving people’s health in spite of illnesses. Accordingly, health care that supports/promotes patients’ health by identifying their health resources will result in better patient outcomes: shorter hospital stays, less re-hospitalization, being better able to cope at home and improved well-being, which in turn lead to lower health-care costs. This scientific anthology is the first of its kind, in that it connects health promotion with the salutogenic theory of health throughout the chapters. the authors here expand the understanding of health promotion beyond health protection and disease prevention. The book focuses on describing and explaining salutogenesis as an umbrella concept, not only as the key concept of sense of coherence.

Promoting the health and wellbeing of children and young people isa vital part of every child nurse’s role. Promoting Healthin Children and Young People provides practical guidance oneveryday health issues such as preventing obesity, dental health,skin care and prevention of diseases and infections. It exploresbest practice for nursing children with chronic illnesses such asasthma, cancer, diabetes and disabilities, and gives guidance onpromoting the health of adolescents looking at issues of sexualhealth, smoking, drugs and alcohol. Each chapter discusses keyhealth promotion messages, relevant government policy and healthpromotion activities. This accessible text provides nurses with theskills and knowledge to transform the NSF into everyday healthpromotion practice. • Provides a clear skills-based approach to undertakinghealth promotion practice • Emphasises the role of the nurse in promoting goodhealth in children and young people • Discusses guidance from recent policy developmentsincluding the National Service Framework for Children • Illustrated with diagrams and boxes highlighting keypoints

There is growing interest internationally in the contributions which the creative arts can make to wellbeing and health in both healthcare and community settings. A timely addition to the field, the Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing is the first work of its kind to discuss the role the creative arts have in addressing some of the most pressing public health challenges faced today. Providing an evidence-base and recommendations for a wide audience, this is an essential resource for anyone involved with this increasingly important component of public health practice. The textbook offers key insights for developing new creative arts-based approaches to health and wellbeing, and shows how these can augment established practices within a variety of social settings. Theoretically grounded and with a strong evidence base, this book brings together contributions from both practitioners and researches to provide a comprehensive account of the field. Using international examples, the textbook elucidates the various approaches that have successfully led to improvements in public health, whilst case studies in healthcare practices evaluate the impact of arts-based initiatives in a multitude of international settings, life-course stages, and social milieus. The Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing is a comprehensive resource that will be essential to anyone with an interest in this increasingly important component of public health practice.