Contents
Arts, Crafts, and Mental Health
Playlist
Intro
Hi, I’m Simon, a counsellor based online or in Oxford, and I enjoy crafts.
The footage on the right is taken from a crafting holiday – you can watch all of them in the Crafting Playlist – they outline how to make each item whilst talking about mental health.
The footage on the left is more of a reel-time clip – making a paper brain.
For me, I found the immersion and flow from crafting really helps with my mental wellbeing, so I wanted to ask the question:
Do Crafts Help with Mental Health?
I’ve looked at the literature to see if there are studies on this question, then the rest of this video is really theorising why crafts might be good for our emotional wellbeing.
Study
I found a few studies including a helpful Meta Review that looked at themes from various other papers between 1995-2007 to pool the stats & generally talked about positive impacts of Crafts.
I want to focus on a recent paper, however.
Last August Helen Keyes and her colleagues analysed the Taking Part Survey using data from 2019-2020.
This survey questioned 7,182 adults in the UK and analysed loneliness, anxiety, life satisfaction, and purpose.
They also asked if they had done Creative Arts and Crafts (which they helpfully abbreviate to CAC) within the last year, then did some fancy maths to make sure things like age, gender, if you have a job, and how rough your street is – aren’t impacting on the results.
What they found was that this CAC was a predictor of what they called Subjective Wellbeing relative to respondents who weren’t CACing– and that also applied when you factored in those socioeconomic factors I mentioned like whether or not your employed.
To summarise some findings from this study:
CAC is 1.6 times more likely to make you feel that your life is worthwhile than your employment status – which is massive.
In other words, an unemployed person who crafts is 60% more likely to feel they have meaning in their life than an employed person who doesn’t.
All of the following was statistically significant at P = 0.001– meaning the data’s not a fluke or chance, and we’re 99.9% sure we can trust the results of the following statistics:
- 4% of the variance in Life Satisfaction was attributed to CAC.
- CAC predicted 11.2% of the variance in how Worthwhile life felt.
- CAC predicted 10.6% of the variance in Happiness.
All of this meant that CAC had more of an impact on wellbeing than how deprived the area you live in is, of being in employment, or of aging 20 years.
This is all really worth jotting down, because taking up an Arts and Crafts hobby is so much more available than moving to a rich area, landing a great job, or realising that we’re not gonna get 20 years younger.
Why Might Crafts help?
The rest of this video looks at some of the things that might be going on for us whilst we are crafting, so we can get insights into why that might be helping with our mental health.
1. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is more than just meditation and can include body exercises such as movement or eating. Mindfulness is all about being in touch with our present moment experience, whatever that looks like, and that includes our: breath, bodily sensations, feelings, thoughts, and what we are doing.
For some folks, especially if we are neurodiverse such as in ADHD, meditation can be too intense, and so something using the hands can be grounding but also anchor us in the present moment – & this is where crafts comes in.
Crafting has been shown to have similar effects to meditation at separating us off from stressors. The focus on the craft and repetitive nature of it is meditative, without trying to multi-task on many demands like the busyness and stimulation modern life presents us with.
Furthermore, meditative exercises build tolerance to our individual experience which aids with loneliness or emotional intensity that can often aggravate our mental health.
2. Flow State
There’s a name for this meditative immersion away from life into an activity.
It’s called Flow State.
This is a similar experience to hyper-focus or being captivated by a special interest.
Research has shown that some key components to reaching a state of Flow include Creativity & being Challenged but that challenge feeling manageable and not overwhelming.
Crafts organically enable that. It takes up our brain and body thinking about the activity, but it’s not so stressful that that state of flow is blocked by difficulty.
Flow state is great at not just distraction and focus, but people who experience it report a sense of confidence and almost ego death as they know what they are doing – who they are, but also a purposefulness and momentary escape from the thinking mind. This can equip people with a confidence and presence that can linger outside of the activity into their day.
3. Distraction from Negative Self-Talk, Trauma, & Pain
Flow State or Mindfulness provide a distraction from negative self-talk or pain which are all present in the moment but fade like background music into the experience of crafting as we passively observe those things rather than being overwhelmed by them.
A meta review from 1995-2007 of articles on crafts and mental health beautifully said, “art can be a refuge from the intense emotions associated with illness”.
One study did crafts such as basketry, pottery, and woodwork with soldiers who were experiencing Shell Shock (another name for PTSD). With trauma, we can get stuck in a loop of trying to avoid triggering traumatic memories, alongside vivid & visceral flashback reminders of the trauma. These crafting activities acted as a diversional strategy away from the trauma, the pains of their injuries, and negative thought patterns which gives an aesthetic distance sufficient enough to build tolerance to it.
Another study looking at pain and recovery post-surgery found that patients who were able to engage with arts and crafts during their stay have statistically shorter stays.
There have been other studies like one in Oxford that looked at playing Tetris to help protect against traumatic responses after road traffic accidents, or a study that found that people who journalled for 15-30min using poetry or emotional writing on traumatic information had reduced GP visits, improved immune function, reduced stress, & this result continued across cultures.
I mean to say, that this distraction isn’t just a break – it helps to reduce the intensity of painful physical, emotional, trauma, and mental symptoms that can weigh on our mental health and that distraction can begin to persist.
4. Achievement, & Challenging Self Beliefs
I mentioned the soldiers doing their basketry previously, with crafts being a diversional strategy, but those soldiers also experienced a sense of hope and accomplishment at learning a new skill – even whilst afflicted with trauma.
See, mental health can be quite sticky and difficult to escape from.
We’re desperate for a life raft, and Short-Term Gratification – the stuff that immediately makes us feel better like junk food, booze, & scrolling TikTok can be a lot more tempting than the Delayed Gratification that brings a deeper contentment than immediate stimulation.
Crafts have a level of immediate enjoyment, being less pressure to set up, and still give that anticipatory reward of working towards finishing a project which is ultimately more fulfilling than instant gratifying bouts of pleasure that we so easily acclimatise to.
This same sense of accomplishment can also challenge Self Beliefs and labels we can put on ourselves when our mental health is struggling, such as us being a ‘loser’ or as though we’re ‘never gonna change’. Instead creating something allows us to realise our inner creativity and capacity to grow and change. We challenge beliefs we may have internalised early in school such as “I’m no good at art” by sticking with the process until we have made something and can begin to find pride in. This accomplishment opens-up avenues to other areas which really nurtures self-belief, hope, and our capacity to grow.
5. Purpose & Meaning Making
The meta review found that a lot of folks turn to visual arts after a cancer diagnosis as a way of meaning making, self-expression and to reconstruct a positive identity in the wake of huge existential information such as a serious and potentially terminal medical condition.
As a counsellor, I work using my client’s language & process. Some of them process very emotionally, some somatically, others more with content, and some with creativity such as metaphor or arts. I am often struck by clients that bring metaphor, or media such as a film or game, to talk about an issue in their lives. When we allow that metaphor, picture, film, musical piece – whatever it might be, to speak to us, there is often rich and valuable meaning that emerges from it in a way that we may struggle to reach if we just rationalise.
6. Self-Expression & Creativity
Related to meaning making, crafts are much freer from rules and physical restrictions than reality. We may be able to draw with rich symbolism, that isn’t possible to describe in the same way narratively & enables us to express difficult things such as grief somatically without limits through creativity.
Creativity comes from within, it draws on different parts of the brain and produces items that we can reflect on to deepen our self-understanding. Our creation is uniquely ours too, it may be we craft a template or draw something many have before, but the process of creating it makes it our own and there is meaning within the process of creating.
7. Social Pressures & Empathy
Although CAC did not significantly reduce anxiety or loneliness, I want to cover how it might help with this and empathy.
Often people with Social Anxiety feel a sense of performance socially and a phobia of rejection or of social failure. This can result in a lot of internal pressure to be interesting or say the right thing, which floods the brain and drives us into a state of panic that just isn’t conducive for conversation.
Crafts can help with social pressures that contribute towards social anxiety and loneliness by giving a shared activity you can do in a social setting without expectations to fill the silences that many with social anxiety fear. Instead, conversation is secondary, and ironically putting your attention in the activity makes conversation both more natural and easier as pressure to perform drops.
On Empathy – I quite like modern art; I have no understanding of art, but I like looking at the pieces as a work as an exercise in empathy and emotional intelligence. As you look at art, you are noticing what it evokes in you (intrapersonal empathy) as well as it might have evoked in the artist (interpersonal empathy) which is how we build empathy – by empathising with our own unique experience and recognising others have theirs.
8. Senses & Doing
Crafting is a multisensory experience.
The hands are touching and feeling, the eyes are looking at what we are creating, maybe there are smells coming from a craft like wood burning in pyrography, perhaps our craft is baking and we have a cheeky taste of the icing sugar, maybe we can hear the satisfying anger holding bang of a hammer as we do woodwork, we realise the position of our body as we finely manipulate clay. Crafts are using every single sense and doing that alongside the planning brain and channelling our feelings into our work. Some folks have sensory sensitivities where certain senses are more or less sensitive, and crafting can be used as a sensory activity to regulate or focus – giving us control over our sensory experience
9. Biochemistry
Several papers talked about the biochemistry of crafting, but I didn’t actually find any biochemical papers that specifically talked about levels of these chemicals.
Many papers talked about increasing dopamine levels. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that connects neurones in the brain in order to communicate messages of feeling good or accomplished. If crafting increases your dopamine levels, it means that it makes you feel good in a natural way.
Some papers also referenced decreasing levels of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that, amongst other things, is used in the stress response. It’s a highly useful hormone for acute issues such as fleeing danger, but our stimulating society oftem means we are constantly stressed and high cortisol levels can lead us to compromise on our health (for example cortisol surpresses immune function because the body is more interested in protection from immediate danger so if we are stressed we are more likely to get colds). If crafting does reduce cortisol, then it helps with stress and thus mental health.
10. Wabi Sabi and the art of Impefection
I bought a Kintsugi kit that I am excited to use (expect to see a short some time in April or May) – it’s the art of repairing broken pottery using gold (or in my case a cheaper golden coloured resin). Kintsugi comes from the Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi.
Wabi Sabi embraces impermanence (that things degrade over time) and imperfection (that perfection is not obtainable for humans) this the fixing pottery with gold – taking something ‘broken’ and making it even more beautiful by highlighting rather than minimising the imperfections.
Crafts in general help with this. Our crafting projects will never be perfect. We could always do more or make it better and there’s a sense of settling and realising we don’t have to be perfect. Art also recognises progression over time – that even our learning is impermanent and will evolve.
11. Etc Etc
Crafting helps with mental health. This seems to ring true for my experience, the literature, and likely for yours. It isn’t a suepr drug – with results suggesting it’ll improve your Subjective Wellbeing by about 10%, but little improvements all add up. No matter your age, or your perception of your ability, I’d encourage you to have a go at channeling your creativity into Arts and Crafts.
I realise that there are likely many other reasons why crafting is helpful for you and would love to read any of your thoughts if you want to drop me an email on www.simonslistening.co.uk or comment on the YouTube Video (I turned comments off from blog posts as I was getting a lot of spam).
Finally, if any of this resonates and you’d like some counselling then again get in touch. I offer a half hour intro call to see if I’m the right fit for you. Counselling can often be quite powerful too when we use your interests such as crafts and what you have made to speak to us
Simon is a Person-Centred Counsellor in Oxford working remotely and in person. He has lived in the county his whole life, and the city for almost 20 years. He appreciates the beauty of the city, nature, and connecting with people to help bring about meaningful change.
He is also a geek – who gets tremendous joy from gaming, crafting, cosplay, and creativity
