Personalized arts prescriptions for behavioral health challenges in the US

Project Summary There is an acute need to address rising mental health concerns among both older and young adults, as seen by recent increases in depression, anxiety, social isolation, and psychiatric crises. However, many barriers currently exist to the provision of comprehensive, holistic, and person-centered care to meet these needs. Behavioral health provider shortages, high costs for mental health care, lack of sufficient insurance coverage of services, and stigma associated with mental health diagnoses or medication are a few of these challenges. Integrated care delivery methods that account for the social aspects of health and leverage community resources to help meet people where they are, such as social prescribing, can help address barriers and improve access to needed care. Social prescribing models are prominent in other countries with public healthcare systems, and they are growing in popularity in the US as a method for addressing health disparities and providing community-centered care. Additionally, there is a large body of evidence that points to the benefits of engagement with arts, art therapy, and cultural enrichment activities for mental health and social connection, both of which have implications for the cost and treatment of physical health conditions. Art Pharmacy is transforming mental health care treatment engagement by harnessing the power of arts and culture for enhancing health and integrating this into the US healthcare system. We are an arts-based social prescribing company that provides personalized arts prescriptions to help patients at risk of or experiencing mental health or social isolation concerns, while addressing the stigma of mental health treatment and helping fill the gap in behavioral health service shortages. Our smart matching technology enables us to tailor recommendations for arts and culture engagements based on patient characteristics, health goals and conditions, and artistic tastes to maximize the health benefits of arts engagement and prevent deterioration of health. In this way, we are creating and supplying a “precision medicine” approach for mental health care that centers an individual’s preferences and helps support social connection to promote health and well-being. This grant application will support the further development of our smart matching technology by leveraging machine learning to create an artificial intelligence-based recommendation engine that will enable us to scale our approach across the nation and provide arts and culture-based social prescriptions to everyone who needs them.