In this episode, the hosts discuss how art and creativity can play an important role in supporting mental health and emotional healing. They also explore the value of reconnecting with personal passions, spending time in nature, and building strong community connections to improve overall well-being.

Mentioned This Episode:

Search: The Artist’s Way

Website: Art Therapy Resources - Information on art therapy and its benefits.

Website: Online Workshops - Offers online art classes that focus on mental well-being.

Website: Mental Health & Art Blogs - A blog that discusses the intersection of art and mental health, featuring various artists' experiences.

Website: Community Support - A community that shares art as a means of coping with mental health issues.

Website: Creative Apps - Primarily a meditation app, it also has creative features that can help reduce stress through mindful art practices.

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If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. 988 Website

Mike and Morgan welcome questions and comments Email: A PsychoDelicous Conversation

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Mike Stratton's A Groove Supreme

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Welcome to a psycho delicious conversation on mental health issues and trends from three local mental health professionals in the greater Lansing area.

I'm Michael Stratton, lmsw And I'm Morgan.

Bowen, pmhnp And I'm Melissa Black, pmhnp And we're here to provide you with a deep dive into the human experience of consciousness and beyond.

Our aim is to be educational and entertaining.

So just kick back and open your ears and your minds foreign.

This is Melissa Black.

Hello.

And I'm Morgan.

Morgan Bowen.

And I'm Michael Stratton.

And you're welcomed.

Also with us today to part two of Art and Mental Health.

It's a good topic.

Yes, there's lots of.

It's kind of all over the place.

But one thing I wanted to kind of talk about in part two is how art can be therapeutic and are, you know, how, how that plays into, you know, like treatment plans and we can talk about anything, obviously.

I'm sure we'll go.

Well, there's a whole realm of art therapy, right?

Right.

Isn't it like a whole sub discipline?

Sure, yeah.

And I don't think it's reimbursed very much.

No, I think it's kind of fallen out of favor because I don't think insurance will cover it.

I have a very good friend who's an art therapist.

Like that's what her original degree is.

She has an lmsw, but I mean she does reg therapy.

Like, I mean she, she paints, she's an artist, but it's not like she does specific back.

Well, but when we were working on the unit, that's what I was going to say we had.

There was art therapy, right?

Yeah, there was.

Yeah, there was a kiln.

There was a kiln.

People would go down and work on pottery.

If someone had.

It's interesting because a psychiatrist would say I want you to do finger paintings.

If someone was very OCD and very, you know, try to stay clean all the time, they get them finger paint.

There were other kinds of arts.

You know, people were making ashtrays.

There's a lot of case down in the basement of St. Lawrence still at least last.

I mean, I haven't been there in years, but I mean I went into the kiln room.

I was like, had my basement key.

Will this open this door?

Yeah, but remember Melissa and I worked there at the same time.

And then the basement became off limit limits because it was like, it was dangerous.

It was really scary.

It was really scary down there.

There was a tunnel.

They one time somebody escaped down in the tunnel.

And it was like 3 o' clock in the morning.

They said, mike, go down there and get them.

I'm like, no, I will not be.

Going in the morning.

They'll be servicing at some point.

They did have a.

The activity therapist had a room down there and it had a giant plant.

Remember, it had this like, huge plant.

Yeah.

Mother plant.

That.

One of the activity therapy booker.

Yeah.

Was to plant, like, you know, cuttings from this plant, and then people would be able to take them home.

They put in little Styrofoam cups.

Yeah.

You went down there, though, and it was like out of like a horror, like video game.

Absolutely was.

But speaking of Van Gogh, someone on, like when you get off of the.

Of the elevator and there's a giant concrete wall in front of you with like two doors or whatever on either side.

But it was mural, like kind of Van Gogh's irises is.

I mean, definitely not like a replica, but like, definitely in that style.

And we used to.

Also.

I have a.

It was a poster that had a list of famous artists that were bipolar.

Yes.

And it.

Mozart, I remember, was on there.

And lots of Shakespeare.

I mean, who knows what these people actually were.

Bipolar.

But.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, the.

Yeah.

The DSM 3, if you.

Or the DSM.

What is it, five now, whatever it is, you could superimpose that on top of any number of artists and find different diagnostic categories.

But what is that exactly?

It's the Diagnostic Statistical Manual.

And it's got all the diagnoses, all the mental health diagnoses, and it's like a thousand pages long or something.

It's crazy how long it is.

And it's a descriptor of these.

You know, just.

It's like looking at the stars and.

Saying, hey, that looks like a bull.

Hey, there's a lion over there.

It's kind of like that.

So you get this constellation of.

Of symptoms and you say, oh, well, that fits this.

This is a diagnosis.

So if it's borderline or.

I love using the word constellation, I will, like, explain that to people.

I'll use that word sometimes.

Like, well, we're looking for, you know, the constellation.

All these things.

It could be this.

It could be.

That depends on which direction we're looking at it from.

So one thing that I do when I meet with people, I've said this in an earlier episode, but it bears repeating, so I shall.

He just said that, like Obi Wan Kenobi.

I know, it makes me feel better.

For Yoda or something.

Bears repeating.

And so.

So shall I hold forth for a second?

When I meet with people, what I try to do is say, what I'd like to do first is get to know you.

Instead of going right into why you're here.

Let me get to know who you are and who are you?

What do you love to do?

Who are you at your best?

Tell me about that.

Give me a sense of your life arc, all those kinds of things.

And I believe what they're doing is they're saying, here's my solution.

And then after that, I say, okay, now tell me your problem.

Because the solution's gonna be inside of their own passion and their own best self and their own connection to whatever, if it's nature or music or whatever it is.

And art is a big part of that.

I mean, even people that love to take hikes, I think a lot of that is an artistic appreciation of the aesthetic of nature.

Agreed.

Absolutely.

What those have together as well, you know, both the aesthetic of being outside and creating art.

Like, I would say my goal or like, a goal would be to be really mindful, like, losing yourself in it, like, being just in the moment.

I will chime in once again and say that when I went through my period of depression, I can tell you I did not want to draw.

I did not want to paint.

I didn't want to do anything.

But what did help was getting out in nature and taking walks.

I don't know what it was that was different about that.

I suppose it is.

As to Morgan's point, the appreciation of beauty, it took me quite a while to even get back to the point where I even wanted to do anything.

Creative inspiration, like that sense of being or the concept of being inspired, that the muse, something, is speaking through you.

Some energy or some something or other for the artist is.

Is the vessel that whatever is channeled through.

So if that's stopped up or that's not accepting business because of, you know, depression or.

And then it's so self.

Or it's so mutually enforcing, you know, the lack of inspiration.

Then there's depression about not doing the thing that's important to you, but then not feeling like you're capable of doing it or able to do it.

That can be a very dark space.

And, like, even feeling being so dark and so low that you don't even remember what it is you have that passion for.

Like, where.

You know, I've had folks where, like, no, I don't remember ever liking anything.

And I'm like, I think you probably.

Did, but, I mean, these Are different brain states.

I mean, I think when you're plugged into I.

It would be interesting to look at a brain scan of someone who is practicing their art and they're really lost in it versus someone who's really depressed.

And I mean, those.

Those parts of the brain are just not talking to each other at that point in time.

But I wonder if people, like, in the midst of feeling manic, you know, if that's.

That all of that lights up at the same time.

You know, that.

And I think that those.

Those particular states or those particular ego states line up in a way that a person feels like I'm doing what I'm here on earth to do.

This feels ripe, but, like, way too right.

And like, so right, they're not sleeping and so right.

That nothing else matters.

Yeah.

Not eating, but there's a compulsion.

You know, we talked about that kind of obsessive quality of an artist that can be like, I need to do this.

I have to get it out.

I have to do this morning, noon and night.

There's, like, very little structure.

People don't eat, they're not sleeping, which is very similar to a manic state.

And then that.

So there's something there.

There's something that I want to say, like that spark that, like, you know, the person is turned on.

Their inspiration.

Yeah, just that inspiration.

That's.

There's something so fundamentally human there to the consciousness.

It's not just a mundane drone.

The grinds, the daily.

You know, that we're so.

That we probably spend most of our lives in.

Well, at least those of us that are in the 9 to 5 daily grind, that there's.

Yeah, there's just a really major, like a human.

A fundamentally human thing there.

But in mania, it's, like, definitely amplified.

Do you feel like.

Do you feel like doing therapy is an art?

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Even the medication aspect of things, I feel like there is art to that.

And I think one of the psychiatrists that we worked with on the unit, like the old school psychiatrists who did a lot of therapy, who weren't.

They were really trained in all of that.

I think we need to get back to that agreement.

Pushing the profession towards medication is really, in the history of psychiatry, a very modern thing, really, since the 60s and into the 70s, then with the birth of Prozac and is so much more about the relationship of the science, you know, the neuroscience for sure, but also pharmaceutical companies and consumerism and lots of other concepts that has taken us away from the more human to human connection that is therapeutic.

That comes with therapy.

I had a conversation with a pharmacy rep this week, and I never want to stand there and have these conversations,.

But, yeah, they're terrible.

She's asking me these questions.

I was enjoying the questions.

And she said, do you think that in our current age, more folks are diagnosed with depression and are getting medication because we're just identifying it more often?

Or do I think that people are more depressed now than they were in the past?

And my answer came very immediately, which, again, that makes me feel like, okay, that's intuitive.

My intuitive feeling.

That also feels like some sort of art to me.

But I think that the messiness of our world and how overstimulating everything is and how plugged in we are expected to be and the 9 to 5 grind being like, more than like, that's not enough for most.

Yeah, it's like 7am to 9pm Grind.

I think it is making things people worse.

Like, do I think that that is true?

Well, mental health is a reflection of what's happening in the culture.

I mean, you know, there's a collective mental health, and that is, you know, a space that art describes.

You know, art is a way to describe how we're feeling, who we are.

You know, the individual artist certainly has this, you know, the stamp, the.

The.

They are the channel.

What their.

Their voice or their perspective is what we are looking at.

And.

But it's a communication.

That's what I.

It's a communication, and I can understand what I'm feeling and how I am in relation to that piece in a way that I wouldn't if I hadn't have seen it.

It goes back to the caves of the cave bend where they would draw the bulls or the.

Whatever it was, and the people chasing it with the spears.

And the original mother figure, that was the clay model that still exists in the world.

You know, all of this.

These old artifacts that people are telling the stories of.

This, hey, this is what happened yesterday.

This is what is going on.

Now.

The other thing I was thinking about in terms of getting in touch with that inner artist in all of us, there was a book that I read a number of years ago, and it's called the Artist's Way.

And have you read it?

I've read it, yeah.

Of course.

You have, yeah.

Oh, my mom was a devotee.

I have not.

No.

This would be a good resource for people to take a look at.

So Julia Cameron, who was once married to Martin Scorsese, I believe.

Right.

She wrote this book.

Someone gave it to me.

As a gift.

It sat on a shelf for, like, three or four years.

And I took a look at it finally one night while I was doing the final side of Midnight here.

I said, okay, I'm gonna bring the book in and read it while I'm doing the show.

And, oh, my gosh, it was like, first of all, it was like, this sounds interesting.

And also, this woman knows the 12 steps.

Yeah, for sure.

And she assigns you.

You got to read the book to really get it.

But she assigns you two tasks to do on a regular basis.

One is that every morning, you get up and you write three pages.

And it doesn't matter what you write.

Just fill up three pages.

Even if it's just.

I hate writing three pages.

And you could do that.

Three pages.

Just.

You just get up and you do it.

And one thing that comes out of that is you recognize that any at the drop of a hat, you can sit down and write three pages.

Yeah, you know, you really can.

And then the second one, which is harder and was harder for me to do, and everyone I've talked to says they also struggled with it, was to take your inner artist on an artist date once a week.

Yeah.

And that was hard.

You know, it's like, go.

You know, it could be take a walk.

It could be go to a museum.

It could be go to a concert or something to feed the artist part of you.

It was hard as a therapeutic strategy.

My.

My mom had been in the artist's way or done the artist's way in the 90s.

This was also, Remember at the Celestian Prophecy.

That was also a big one.

I never did that one.

But anyway, so when I was.

Let's see, 29, things really fell apart for me, and I was struggling.

My parents were very helpful in several ways, but one of the things my mom kind of mandated that I do is the artist, the pages, the morning pages.

And so I could not sleep.

I was having such difficulty sleeping.

So I would get up and I would write, and it was just stream of consciousness.

I'd never really been a journal or anything like that.

And so I did it.

And it really was, looking back in hindsight, a sort of stepping stone.

Those were like stepping stones to just begin to move through where I was at.

And, yeah, super important and helpful for me.

And your mom listens to this podcast, doesn't she?

Or does she still?

She does, yeah.

When I make her.

When I make her.

The other thing she did for me at that time was she was like, I'm gonna buy you Some walking shoes.

I was living in Chicago, and she's like, I want you to go walk, like, every day for an hour.

I want you to get out of this dark, dingy, terrible apartment to go walk.

And I did.

I would.

And I.

That was really helpful.

The pages and the walking were two very helpful things.

After my divorce, I tried to do the pages.

I couldn't quite get myself to do the pages.

But I was like, okay, what can I do?

And so I was a daily haiku.

So three lines.

I started with.

I got myself back into it with three lines, and then eventually kind of got back to the three pages.

But that's something I've actually, like, recommitted myself to recently.

Like, in the last month or so.

Like, really?

Okay.

Right.

Right in the pages.

Melissa.

Yeah.

And it does feel much better.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I. I journal every day.

And one thing that I've been doing recently is that I've been committing to write a half hour a day because I. I want to.

I. I feel like I've got one more book inside me, and so I'm gonna really try to.

To get to that.

What is the book gonna be about?

It', unreadable, Unwritable novel is what I call it.

I really want to write a humor book about my experiences online dating for the two years between my divorce and getting together with Ryan.

Like, but I really want it to be funny and not, like.

And I think I can be funny.

I think I can be funny.

Oh, you are funny.

You are typically funny.

So, you know, I was like, well, maybe I'll come up with, like, chapter names based on these really special individuals that I encountered.

Really just individuals.

My wife has some stories if you want to tap into it.

She has amazing, like, one chapter being called Mr. Penny.

Mr. Penny, because he paid for the check with pennies.

One of the chapters would be scary carrying steals his electricity from his mom's house and wears New Balance.

Five thirties, I think.

I think I'm about this person.

Scary.

Scary Terry is.

His photo is 15 years old on the dating site.

I mean, not his real name, by the way.

Not his real name.

No, no.

The privacy of those involved is protected or whatever.

FaceTime.

So I am kind of curious.

How often do you guys find yourself with your patients or clients and then kind of recommend or try to get them towards finding a creative outlet as a way of helping themselves?

That's a good question.

I oftentimes will.

One of the first things I try to get People to do is to develop some type of community, like social engagement.

So sometimes that involves, you know, some type of activity, like something that they can do with, with other people.

So I always think in my mind, like, engagement with, you know, those around them is kind of primary.

And people usually do not want to do that.

They're like, nope, I don't want to do that.

I definitely, like Mike said, kind of getting to know someone, I'll want to know, like, what are their interests so that I can then like weave it back in or go back to that later.

But almost every, like, you know, a lot of times folks are like, I'm fine.

Nope, all good.

Like, are you watching anything?

Are you reading anything?

Are you, what are you doing?

Are you getting out?

You know, like, trying to get an idea of what they're engaging with, what they're consuming and seeing if we can get something therapistic.

Yeah, I do that too.

Or I'll ask them, you know, what, what they're watching and try to.

Exactly what you were talking about.

I do do that quite a lot.

Yeah.

I'm very client centered in terms of what it is that their interests are and what they, what they used to do that they really enjoyed that they've gotten away from to see.

There's a great line of Beetlejuice where the, where the dead people go back to the social worker in hell.

And I don't know if it's hell, but anyway, purgatory.

I think it's like a limbo.

Yes.

Some waiting and they're trying to figure out how do we haunt the house.

And she says, do what you know.

Yeah, so that's what I say to people, you know, do what you know, if, you know, if, if you, if you play guitar but you haven't picked it up in a couple of months, try to just pick it up now and then just pick it up once a day and put it back down after five minutes.

Just, just hold it for a few minutes.

I read the.

It was just a quote.

I don't know who said it.

It was a writer or someone, and it's in a little meme image, you know, on Facebook or Instagram or whatever.

But it's like, you know, finding peace with yourself at middle age is like becoming who you were at 16, but really being friends with them, really loving yourself.

And so that inspired me to write a poem about that.

Can you recite that poem?

I cannot, no.

I'm bad at memorizing my poems.

And I just wrote it two days ago.

But like, thinking of, you know, for a lot of us, like, what was I interested in at 16, you know, and I was absolutely writing poems, obsessed with Humphrey Bogart movies, listening to music, constantly wearing blue oxford shirts.

And, you know, I was like, wait, she was pretty cool.

She is cool.

Did you.

Did you wear that on purpose today,.

Knowing that I bought this to, like, as, like, hey, this was my uniform for, like, all of my years.

Like, why am I not wearing a blue oxford shirt anymore?

So it is to, like, reconnect with.

I love that.

I really do love that.

One of the things I was doing at 16 was theater.

I was really involved in the theater, and I took classes here at Lansing Community College.

There was a.

Actually a summer theater program that I took with several friends.

And so stage and theater stuff was a really big area of both community as well as.

As well as expression.

And I will give a shout out to my brother, Blake Bowen, who is the faculty member in the LCC theater department, who is doing some great work with the theater department here.

And I saw a play he directed, which I can't remember the name, but it was literally a month ago.

And.

But it was about fairy tales.

He did a great job.

And I could tell that the.

The cast, the people that were in it were connected.

They were.

Yeah.

That had to do with the Grimm's very.

Yeah.

I was in the Black Box theater here.

Like, a spectacular where they fit every single grim.

Yeah.

Story in one.

Yeah.

And it had a great.

It was a great performance.

But the connection.

And when you're in a Black Box theater, it's very.

The vibe is so part of the, you know, part of the experience.

And it was, like, such a positive space.

And I think my brother Blake did just such a good job facilitating that.

Very cool.

And I would say, going back to 16, my community was theater and marching band, and there was a lot of crossover there.

And I'm still really good friends with a lot of that community that, like, we had all come together.

We were all just like a bunch of ragtag weirdos, and it was great.

So one of the stories I want to tell real quickly is when I was in college, I was living with a couple of guys that were very, very artistic.

And one guy was a really talented writer, and he had moved to New York to become a writer.

And when I got into social work, the graduate school, to be able to do that, I.

After the first day of orientation, I called him in New York, and I was so depressed, and I said, you know what?

I should be doing what you're doing.

I should drop out of this.

I want to start writing.

I want to do this.

And he said, why are you making it like a choice like that?

Why don't you do both have this career as a therapist and be a writer?

And I thought, oh my God, I'd never thought of that.

So whoever you are out there in the world, it's not an exclusive thing.

In fact, you probably aren't going to make a living being an artist.

Do what you do, but also do art.

You know.

A psycho Delicious Conversation is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only.

It is no substitute for therapy and should not be treated as such.

If you feel a need for real therapy, you should consult your local provider, Google therapy or therapist in your area.

Check your community mental health or a suicide suicide hotline if you are feeling suicidal.

Mike Morgan and Melissa welcome your questions, feedback or dilemmas.

Feel free to send your emails to psych.dlishgmail.com that's p s y c-dot d e e l I s h mail.com.

The views expressed on this podcast are solely the opinions of Mike Stratton, Morgan Bowen, and Melissa Black and do not reflect the views or opinions of any site broadcasting this podcast.

Replication of this podcast without written permission is strictly prohibited.