The Healing Power of Creativity
5 minute read
Listening to the 6th year students on Morning Ireland and Liveline this week who feel anxious and stressed about the Government’s decision not to offer a hybrid Leaving Cert option this summer made me feel despondent about the still laissez-faire attitude toward mental health that appears to pervade our society. Admittedly, I’m not an educator or a parent, so perhaps I’m in no way qualified to comment, but it seems to me we should be protecting our teenagers from heightened levels of stress for as long as we possibly can. They’re much too young to be experiencing sleepless nights over anything, let alone a state-approved exam. Life is a little like hurdling. You know there’ll be obstacles along the way, so you need a good stretch of flat track between the starting block and that first hurdle if you’re going to jump it with comfort and ease. To my mind, school leavers have yet to get off that starting block. It’s much too early to begin hurdling.
Of course for most of us, Covid has felt not so much like a hurdle, but a giant climbing wall devoid of footholds, and proof of this is evident in the variety of mental health surveys that have been carried out since the pandemic kicked in. In August last year, St Patrick’s Mental Health Service released its annual Attitudes to Mental Health and Stigma survey. It found that almost half of Irish adults were treated for mental health difficulties in 2021, an increase of 19% since 2019. The survey also revealed that an enormous 87% of adults believe there is a “worrying prevalence of anxiety” in Irish society.
But even more concerning is the fact that 66% of those surveyed believe that being treated for a mental health difficulty is seen as a sign of personal failure.
It looks to me like we’re setting up our teenagers to feel like failures.
The whole scenario leaves me feeling as confused and frustrated as a chapter of Ulysses did in university. I just don’t get it. One of the positives of this report, however, was that more than half of respondents are trying new ways to improve their mental health, from more time outdoors to new hobbies. And while you may be weary of hearing about Covid crafters – the knitters, sewers, bakers, mosaic makers etc, who’ve powered through lockdown producing Turner Prize-worthy pieces – a recent international study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, found that there’s a direct relationship between crisis, creativity and wellbeing. The study, which was carried out in China, Germany and the United States, reported that in all three countries the impact of Covid-19 triggered creative process engagement, which strengthened participants’ self-reported creative growth and led to a higher level of perceived wellbeing.
The study has hardened up what at times has felt like a Pollyanna approach to the pandemic – could a pair of knitting needles really help rid us of our woes? Joanne Mooney, an extremely talented crafter who sells beautiful handmade pieces on her namesake website, offers creative workshops and has an Instagram following of more than 40,000, tells me that she has always used creativity as an emotional tool. “It stems from my childhood,” she explains. “I remember sitting around the kitchen table as a child with cardboard, crayons, wool and glue, making and doing. Maybe that’s why I love creating so much. It takes me back to a happy time in my life.”
Certainly, doing things we enjoyed as children can reinstate healthy emotions such as the sense of security we felt then.
In this same vein, weighted hula hooping is predicted to be the next big fitness craze of 2022 and I can understand why. How many belly laughs did you have as a child or teen, gyrating to hold that hoop high up on your hips?
Joanne Mooney and her Frida Kahlo textile art piece
For Mooney, creativity is full of emotion. “It’s full of elation, pride, and of course frustration if it’s not going right. It’s important to enjoy the process, though, and not beat yourself up if a project isn’t perfect. What’s most important is that creating makes you feel good while you are doing it.” As soon as restrictions were announced in early 2020, Mooney threw herself into creating. “I pulled up the carpet on my stairs. I wallpapered and painted. Then I turned my hands to smaller tasks, like punch needle embroidery. My creativity definitely helped me through the crisis. In fact, I was at my most creative. I feel like when I’m making, all the outside ‘noise’ is switched off and I’m in another world.”
Mooney believes creativity is for everybody, but while she has been creating her entire life, not everyone has, and it can be difficult to know where to start if you’re looking for an outlet. Picking up a crochet needle can feel as alien as using a quill if you’ve no experience of it. For this reason, perhaps it’s time we took our cue from Australia, which trialled an eight-week social enterprise program last year called Creativity on Prescription, to which GPs have begun referring patients with mental distress. Over the course of these eight weeks, participants try out a different creative activity each week. In an interview with The Guardian, one of the programme’s architects explained that on the course, “People experience a different version of themselves. And that’s really important for personal change to happen.”
It’s a more holistic approach to our wellbeing, and while I don’t favour it over a medical approach, or vice versa, I think creativity truly should be something that’s taught in school not only as an end in and of itself, but as a means of managing mood and mental health. This way, our creativity would have a better chance of developing and evolving with us as we mature rather than being abandoned because we think, as we grow older, that we don’t have time for it, or need it. It also shifts focus away from the finished item or end result – how many people don’t consider themselves creative because they haven’t produced anything ‘good enough’ – and onto the practice itself, where Mooney believes it should be.
That’s the difficult part though isn’t it? Carving out time to engage in something that may not yield anything Insta-worthy; something which may not be worth framing, hanging, gifting or even keeping. But that’s where the release and the healing can be found; by not having to perform, or achieve, or explain or feel ashamed. It’s solely about the process of creativity. And as Maya Angelou so beautifully put it: “The more you use, the more you have.”
Marie Kelly, February 2022
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