Harkness Centenary Discussions: Can the arts and humanities reduce our mental health crisis?
There are many reasons for the increase in mental health problems, including the impacts of the Covid pandemic, but can we find better ways to improve mental health? Can the nourishing aspects of music, literature, and art be used to improve the well-being of all? And could better funding for the arts and humanities help us address the growing concern about mental health?
Harkness chair Judy Hargadon led the last of the current tranche of discussions between Harkness Fellows with Dr Mary Docherty, poet Katrina Porteous and former government department finance director David Rossington. She wished Gwyneth Lewis, who had been due to chair, a speedy recovery.
Dr Mary Docherty began the night’s proceedings by providing contemporary observations from the frontline of the current mental health crisis. As an adult psychiatrist working in a busy NHS A&E department in South East London, Dr Docherty’s role is to work with people in acute mental distress. Presentations included relapse of psychosis and mania, serious self-harm, the immediate consequences of suicide attempts, and a noticeable rise in mental health difficulties among children and young people, partly linked to the wider impact of the pandemic and societal changes. These challenges sit alongside the physical injuries that emergency staff routinely manage in an area affected by high levels of deprivation and associated violence.
She noted that the pressures on services are evident and could be seen as a ‘crisis’ if it wasn’t the norm. “I have people who are really extremely unwell,” she noted. “And they can wait several days for a safe space or a bed. I may see several people in a single morning requiring intensive care after episodes of self-harm. When I look at the system, it is clear things are not where they need to be — and haven’t been for some time.” In her view, this reflects the long-term underinvestment in mental health services, combined with increasing social and economic pressures, and other contributory factors. She emphasizes that widening inequalities and the broader context of economic strain shape the demand for mental health support.
But can the arts play a part in arresting the rise in mental illness – or at least helping to promote strong mental health in the first place?
There is plenty of evidence that arts aid mental health – so much so that since 2014 NICE had recommended arts therapies for psychosis as part of a multimodal approach alongside pharmacotherapy and other psychological interventions to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life Dr Docherty said. Arts can also change people’s brain neurobiology with neuroscientific findings show activation of brain circuits linked to emotional regulation. There is a specific and differential impact for socially isolated and marginalised groups where art therapies are used, she said, and this was probably related to their capacity to address barriers to communication and social integration.
But the problems were so significant now, if she was given the choice of treating people at a population level with arts and humanities or responding to the needs of those with severe mental illness , the answer for psychiatrists, at least, is clear. And that is to “save the lives in front of us” “Prevention is everything,” she said. “But when we are fire-fighting and when we have got (very mentally unwell) people sat in our A&E department like that, it feels such a luxury.”
Katrina Porteous, an award winning poet and historian, then offered her view – explaining first that she was no expert and was talking from her own experiences of working with often challenged communities.
Her first point was that reading was fundamental to empathy and social connection.
When running writing workshops she said that the best way to get people out of themselves was to write poetry that wasn’t personal. It wasn’t always helpful to be introspective in the way that someone like, for example, Sylvia Plath, had been as this produced mixed results for the art form and artist alike.
“I have often been cornered into taking on the role of therapist,” she said. “Listening to people’s often very dark feelings, so I now advise people who lead workshops to concentrate on the technical aspects of writing – not its emotional content”.
Katrina argued that art is very important in affirming two things: first, community identity. In this she highlighted local dialects and stories. Secondly, she said that poetry can affirm a closer relation to nature. In her own poetry Katrina looked towards science and nature – to things that provided perspective such as deep geological time or the vastness of space, which could fulfil a role which religion played in the past. Words slow us down, act in a meditative way on our bodies, helping people to lose themselves in something bigger with benefits for better mental health, she said.
Lastly, Katrina argued that it was important not to think of the arts as in service to health. They are important in themselves.
Former Department of Culture, Media and Sport executive, David Rossington said he had seen similar benefits in homeless people who worked with an arts charity in Oxford, where he had been a trustee. One of the projects was working with a photographer to recreate famous photographs; the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover for example, and the black and white shot of David Cameron and Boris Johnson in the Bullingdon Club. The results were then exhibited.
“It went really well for those taking part,” he said. “It was a means of rebuilding self-worth and connection with others, to address their mental health and try to work through some of the issues which had led to their homelessness.”
Funding for such projects was under pressure though, he said. He said there had been cuts of more than 30 per cent in public arts funding since 2010 and this was having an effect on artists and performers, conceding that “…while arts funded projects can help, it won’t be the solution here.”
There were then contributions from other Harkness Fellows. The first, a retired consultant psychologist who had suffered from her own mental health struggles, said how important reading was (agreeing with a point Katrina had made earlier). There were lots of ways to help people come out of themselves and other forms of art helped too. Not everyone wanted to talk and being creative allowed them an outlet that they may not have had before.
The next contributor, who had worked in business after attending Stanford University, said that there were good economic arguments for investing in the arts. Not only was the UK known for its soft power, he said, but also for its creative output and this should make the argument easier to make. But the bigger issue in many ways was wrestling arts budgets from central control so that local communities had a greater say. Older people could also be mobilised to help, he said.
The meeting then heard from a Fellow who had joined the meeting from Serbia. She was a doctor and had seen the consequences of war in Bosnia. She now wrote and taught for a living. She said she hadn’t felt able to write about her experiences until 20 years later – and that this was because her creativity had been squeezed out of her by the study and practice of medicine. “Writing is so important,” she said. “You must have some artistic outlet?.”
Another Fellow made a similar point, saying that he may have become unwell over the years if he didn’t have music in his life. He echoed an earlier point that there needed to be community solutions and that participation in arts is a very effective way to alleviating isolation.
A few Fellows made the point that it wasn’t a question of whether arts helped improve mental health as there was good evidence for this. Rather that it was how we get more art into communities that need it. One, who worked in West London, said that looking to government wasn’t always the answer. She said the community of Grenfell had done great things and we needed to build on the idea of philanthropy or giving back – something that chair Judy Hargadon said was more prevalent in America than the UK.
But another cautioned against this, saying we could learn much more from cities such as Bologna in Italy, Bilbao and San Sebastian in Spain where co-operative working – rather than competition, had improved wellbeing.
Another questioned even if the arts were taken to communities, would anyone actually engage – a question given emotional poignancy with the final contribution from Dr Docherty.
She recalled when the council had closed a day centre for people with mental health needs in her area. “In the next 5 months, I admitted multiple patients that had been using the centre,” she said. “They hadn’t been in hospital for between 5 and 15 years.
“One of those admissions would have paid for the centre for a year but we had no data system that would tell us that was the implication…of that decision.”
She added that it was extremely important that organisations recorded the effectiveness of creation intervention. “Not only is art an end in itself, it is also incredibly helpful.”
Moderator Judy Hargadon (HF 92-93), is chair of the Harkness Fellows Association After a long career in health care management, with posts including CEO of a Trust and a Health Authority, Judy was the Chief Executive of the School Food Trust, set up to transform school food after Jamie Oliver’s TV expose in 2005. Judy led the change from the Trust’s then NDPB status to an independent charity, the Children’s Food Trust. She was, until recently, a non executive director for NHS Devon. She was a member of Council for the University of Exeter, a non-executive director for Restorative Solutions CIC and has volunteered with charities that support struggling families and domestic abuse survivors in recent years.
David Rossington CB, (HF 1980-82)) is a Commissioner and Senior Independent Director for the Gambling Commission, and Deputy Chair of the Advisory Committee on National Records and Archives. A former senior civil servant, he worked for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), including as Finance Director and acting Director General. He is Vice Chair of a charity for veterans who otherwise might be homeless (The Stoll Foundation). He has been a trustee of an Oxford charity – Arts at the Old Fire Station – which gave homeless people the opportunity to create art as part of the rebuilding of their lives. David holds a degree in History and French from Balliol College, Oxford, a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School, Harvard University, and an economics MSc from Birkbeck College, London.
Katrina Porteous (HF 1982-84) is a freelance poet and historian, specialising in work on the theme of ‘nature’ and ‘place’. Graduating in History from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, she studied creative writing at Berkeley and Harvard Universities on her Harkness Fellowship. She lives on the Northumberland coast and is President of the Northumbrian Language Society and the Coble and Keelboat Society. Katrina led poetry workshops in a wide variety of community settings for three decades, from Shetland (1996-7) to Newlyn (Cornwall) as well as across Northeast England, from schools to retirement homes to mental health groups. She has published four collections with Bloodaxe. The latest, Rhizodont (2024), explores aspects of extinction, change and survival at a local and planetary level. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and recently won the Laurel Prize 2025.
Dr Mary Docherty (HF 2018-19) is the National Clinical Director for Adult Mental health for the NHS and is a Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust working at King’s College Hospital. Her background includes training in social sciences and organisational consultancy. She has held policy roles with the Department of Health, NHS England, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and London’s Healthy London Partnership working on national and regional programs tackling inefficiencies and inequalities at service interfaces for individuals living with mental ill health. She has policy, research and clinical expertise in service integration including research in integrated mental, physical and social care as a former Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy at Columbia University, New York
Photos licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic and the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licenses.