The significance of mental health inequities globally is illustrated by higher rates of anxiety and depression amongst racial and ethnic minority populations as well as individuals of lower socioeconomic status. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated these pre-existing mental health inequities. With rising mental health concerns, arts engagement offers an accessible, equitable opportunity to combat mental health inequities and impact upstream determinants of health. As the field of public health continues to shift its focus toward social ecological strategies, the social ecological model of health offers an approach that prioritizes social and structural determinants of health. To capture the impacts of arts engagement, this paper creates an applied social ecological model of health while aiming to advocate that engaging in the arts is a protective and rehabilitative behavior for mental health.

Authors: Rodriguez AK, Akram S, Colverson AJ, Hack G, Golden TL, Sonke J.

Title: Arts Engagement as a Health Behavior: An Opportunity to Address Mental Health Inequities.

Community Health Equity Research & PMID: 37196338 PMCID: PMC11409561 DOI: 10.1177/2752535X231175072

The field of public health recognizes that health is not determined strictly or even primarily by medical care, nor is it mainly driven by individual behaviors and biologies. In fact, “[m]edical care is estimated to account for only 10–20 %” of contributors to health (1)–with up to 50% determined by environments and socioeconomic factors (2). These contextual influences are referred to as “social determinants of health.” Increasingly, social determinants are also understood to include arts, culture, and nature..

Golden Tasha L. , Maier Lokuta Alyson , Mohanty Aanchal , Tiedemann Alyssa , Ng T. W. Cherry , Mendu Maanasa , Morgan Nicole , Kuge Maria Nagae , Brinza Tessa

TITLE: Social prescription in the US: A pilot evaluation of Mass Cultural Council's “CultureRx”

JOURNAL: Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME: Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR: 2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1016136

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2022.1016136 ISSN=2296-2565

Engaging in fun and having a good time was a playfulness component and temperamental disposition that helps one perceive, manage, and utilize emotions as well as manage the emotions of social others. This study’s findings suggest that the temperamental disposition, playfulness connects to an individual’s emotional intelligence.

Holmes, R. & Hart, T., (2022) “Exploring the Connection between Adult Playfulness and Emotional Intelligence”, The Journal of Play in Adulthood 4(1), 28–51. doi: https://doi.org/10.5920/jpa.973