Innovation, art, and mental health

Some highlights from SXSW

Throughout my career, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of attending some amazing and inspirational events. The people you meet, the stories you hear, they make an impact on you and stay with you over time. I could spend days talking about these experiences, and know that they, each in their own little way, have helped shaped me as a person and how I approach my career.

This week I had the good fortune to attend SXSW. SXSW, short for South by Southwest, is an annual convergence of technology, music, film, and interactive media held in Austin, Texas. It’s a pretty high end event where creative minds from various industries gather to showcase innovation, share ideas, and explore emerging trends. The festival features a smart mix of speakers, panel discussions, workshops, film screenings, music performances, and interactive exhibits. SXSW has earned a reputation for launching groundbreaking technologies, discovering new musical talents, and premiering highly anticipated films.

I was there for just a few short hours so tried to make the best of my time. In the exhibit hall, I met a group that’s creating clothes that heat you by magnifying the sun. The people in the sales booth were walking around looking like they were wearing futuristic bubble suits, all of which were made from recycled plastic. From this innovative environmental company to groups focused on the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to super innovative companies that created temporary offices so people could have virtual meetings all over the world, I was blown away with these ideas.

I will get to why I was attending SXSW in a second, but first I wanted to share about two experiences I had in the exhibit hall that stood out to me. The first, was a lovely non-profit based out of Atlanta, Georgia called Hope Booth. Hope Booth has done something pretty cool; they have taken old phone booths and repurposed them to allow for anyone to interface with an interactive video that’s all about you and your mental health. You walk up to the phone booth, look into the screen, answer a series of questions, and then gives you encouraging words of hope and wisdom, and in some cases, even gets you to take action, e.g. practice deep breathing, or say words positive words of affirmation to yourself. I loved the concept, and the team behind it. Oh, it also uses GPS to help connect you to local services, as needed. This team and their work did a lot of things at once, which you know I loved, including helping bring care and support to where people are!

The second experience was the art. SXSW has art everywhere, and Austin already being a pretty hip art town, was flush with talent and creative ideas. There was one interactive art exhibit that really caught my eye. My clinician mind is always thinking about the power of “talking it out.” What we know from the literature is that emotional expression, through writing, song, talking, or any other creative way, can be good for our mental health. You can’t keep it in - there has to be some way to let it out.

As you can see in the picture above, one artist collaborative took this to the next level by creating a really interesting display where rolled up pieces of paper, some white, some red, were placed together on a large wall. The instructions were simple: if it’s white, write on it, if it’s red you can read it (just put it back). While this is such a simple idea, it was powerful when you considered the hundreds of other people who had taken a minute to do this task. I was floored by how cool this was. And this was just one example of immersive or experiential art. It made me wonder why we don’t see more things like this at our conferences. Instead of just booths and booths handing out pens you don’t need or another stress ball that’s just going to collect dust, why not more interactive art displays that get you to actually think about your emotions! I bet you’d remember that experience.

While I am sure there were countless of these art installations to explore, I was actually at SXSW to talk about social prescribing, art, and mental health. Our abstract we used for submission said it best:

The health care industry is struggling to meet the demand for mental health services. What if arts & culture activities could be prescribed by your doctor to support your health goals? Decades of research demonstrate that participation in the arts can have a positive impact on health. Despite the availability of arts activities in almost every community, individuals with health concerns often don’t turn to the arts as a source of medicine. A new movement is emerging in the United States called Social Prescribing through which health care providers prescribe social interventions as a part of care.

I had the wonderful opportunity to moderate a panel of truly amazing people to talk this one out. Chris Appleton, Tasha Golden, PhD, and Lisa Wong, MD were a moderators dream as they spoke eloquently and engaging on this topic that’s deeply personal to all of us. I’ve written a bit about social prescribing before, but needless to say, this panel taught me so much more about the intricacies of the issue.

We had a packed room of folks who wanted to know more about social prescribing, and how the arts and mental health fit in. It was a robust discussion, and as we opened it up for questions, we had a pretty long line that made us run over our time (always a good sign!). I’d encourage you all to look at the work of these panelists and get to know how their innovative approaches are helping address mental health in new and novel ways. I will post the video here once it’s live.

What I appreciated the most about this panel was how seamlessly they had blended the arts into their respective worlds. On one side of the stage we had public health leaders that were working tirelessly to go upstream and prevent major issues from ever becoming a problem and leveraging the arts along the way. On the other side, we had a clinician who is involved in direct care and integrates social prescribing to the arts into their work. Tying it all together was an organization, Art Pharmacy, whose focus it is to allow an easier connection between health care and the arts world. It was magic.

You see, at times I think we've become stagnant in our thinking around solutions for mental health. We have convinced ourselves that the only places people can heal are in traditional settings like clinics. But here’s the truth, there’s nothing magic about these settings, it’s actually the people who make it work. The experiences you have, the quality of care you received, and what you, the most important person in the equation, feel like you get from it all is critical. For mental health, with so many people not able to get into care, or get good quality care, why not try as many solutions as we can to solve this problem?

Next time I have the opportunity to attend SXSW, I am definitely going to spend more time there. The experiences I had at SXSW this year were new and different. For me, it was a reminder and a challenge to remain committed to exploring new and creative solutions that can help address mental health in our world. I think that opening up our minds to fresh and new solutions is just what the mental health world needs right now.