CancerConnections

The Role of Creating Art in Health

Creative expression provides opportunities for cancer patients to process their cancer experience and give them hope through artistic activities.

Creative expression helps you to:

• express yourself visually when it is difficult to do so verbally;
• express what you are currently feeling, a memory that you do not want to forget, or your dreams;
• alleviate stress or relax;
• change your mood or come out of depression;
• express what it feels like to cope with life-threatening illness or tell the story of your disease;
• improve your self-worth and leave a permanent gift to be enjoyed by all;
• share something (an experience, emotion, feeling or meaning) with friends and family;
• develop the ability to make decisions for oneself and exercise control over choice;
• enhance quality of life;
• improve self-esteem;
• develop a positive attitude and will to live;
• create ways to relate to others in a meaningful way.

Source: "Diversions - Creativity and Coping," Cynthia Perlis, BA; Ernest H. Rosenbaum, MD; Isadora R. Rosenbaum, MA.