Empowerment and arts participation for people with mental health needs

Empowerment has been described as the ‘holy grail’ of health promotion. This article describes an evaluation of arts participation for people with mental health needs that both measured empowerment outcomes and explored the processes by which positive outcomes were achieved, through six qualitative case studies. For the outcomes study, 62 arts and mental health project participants returned a questionnaire, including a measure of empowerment, soon after joining their project and again six months later. The follow-up questionnaire asked participants to rate the impact of their arts involvement on the issues addressed in the measure. Six diverse arts and mental health projects took part in the case studies. Interviews with project participants explored what they saw as the benefits of arts involvement and how these came about. Results from the outcomes study showed significant improvements in empowerment and were suggestive of a strong causal link with arts participation. Analysis of the case study interviews revealed five processes through which benefits relating to empowerment were brought about. We argue that psychological empowerment is in itself important for people with mental health needs. In addition, our case studies indicate that some arts and mental health projects do empower participants at a social as well as individual level

Evaluating the impact of participatory art projects for people with mental health needs

Participatory art projects for people with mental health needs typically claim outcomes such as improvements in confidence, self-esteem, social participation and mental health. However, such claims have rarely been subjected to robust outcome research. This paper reports outcomes from a survey of 44 female and 18 male new art project participants attending 22 art projects in England, carried out as part of a national evaluation. Outcomes were quantified through self-completed questionnaires on first entry to the project, during January to March of 2006, and 6 months later. The questionnaires included three measures: empowerment, mental health [Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (CORE)] and social inclusion. Paired t-tests were used to compare overall change, and mixed model repeated measures analysis of variance to compare subgroups, including age, gender, educational level, mental health and level of participation. Results showed significant improvements in empowerment (P= 0.01), mental health (P= 0.03) and social inclusion (P= 0.01). Participants with higher CORE scores, no new stress in their lives and positive impressions of the impact of arts on their life benefited most over all three measures. Positive impressions of the impact of arts were significantly associated with improvement on all three measures, but the largest effect was for empowerment (P= 0.002) rather than mental health or social inclusion. This study suggests that arts participation positively benefits people with mental health difficulties. Arts participation increased levels of empowerment and had potential to impact on mental health and social inclusion

Development of a measure of social inclusion for arts and mental health project participants

Background: Promoting the social inclusion of mental health service users is a UK policy priority, but the development of outcome measures in this area is at an early stage. Aim: To develop a social inclusion measure for use in a study assessing the outcomes of arts participation for people with mental health needs. Method: Concept and question development based on literature review, national and European surveys and results of a survey of arts and mental health projects. Measure piloted with 23 arts participants/service user researchers and field tested with 88 arts project participants returning questionnaires including the social inclusion measure, a measure of empowerment and the CORE mental health measure. Results: Three scales were constructed measuring social acceptance, social isolation and social relations. Internal consistency was good for the individual scales and for the measure as a whole. Correlations with empowerment and CORE scores indicate reasonable predictive power for the population. Conclusions: Tests to date indicate the measure is acceptable and measures relevant concepts with good internal consistency. Test-retest reliability and construct validity are not established and replication is required to confirm internal consistency and establish a normative profile for the population