Rates of depression and anxiety among young people in the U.S. have increased sharply in recent years — it's been called a "youth mental health crisis." Now, a novel approach to combat the issue, developed in the United Kingdom, is coming to San Diego. And it uses a very old kind of medicine.
Starting next month, mental health care providers at San Ysidro Health will begin writing prescriptions for arts and culture. With the help of a care navigator, teenage patients will be able to choose from activities at nearly 200 local arts organizations, including the Oceanside Museum of Art, The Old Globe and The Dancehouse.
The initiative, a collaboration between San Ysidro Health and the Atlanta-based company Art Pharmacy, is an example of "social prescribing." This type of treatment is still fairly uncommon in the U.S., but it has been blossoming in the United Kingdom for decades.
"The U.K. has been the first country to have a whole national program of social prescribing," said Daisy Fancourt, a researcher and professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London. "Every single (general practitioner) doctor's practice in the country now has a link worker — someone who knows all the available community activities, not just arts, but also nature or volunteering, social groups, financial advice, housing advice."
Fancourt and her colleagues' research has shown how effective this approach can be.
"There's now a phenomenal amount of literature that looks at engaging in the arts and other cultural activities and demonstrating really tangible long-term benefits to health," she said.
The research, she said, shows that arts activities have social prescribing, and has a whole array of measurable impacts. It can reduce stress hormones and inflammation in the immune system, and improve blood pressure and cholesterol — not to mention the psychological benefits. And for young people, those can be profound and long-lasting.
"When adolescents engage more in the arts, it actually helps to improve their levels of self-control as they get older," she said. "And this then is related to lower engagement in antisocial behaviors like crime or behaviors that might put them at risk or substance use."
Now, there is a growing group of organizations and advocates bringing social prescribing to the U.S. Art Pharmacy launched in 2022, and now operates in seven states. The organization partners with health systems and universities, and tends to focus on young people facing depression and anxiety, as well as older adults suffering from chronic illness and social isolation.
"We've definitely had some success over the last couple of years, and the movement is growing," said Art Pharmacy CEO Chris Appleton.
He said they've seen strong results in patients' health and well-being, but there are also signs that the approach is effective economically.
"At Art Pharmacy, we see a 72% reduction in emergency department visits," Appleton said. "We see reductions in behavioral health admissions, behavioral health hospitalizations. These are very expensive costs for health care payers."
These findings echo those of some studies in the U.K., which have found that social prescribing reduces future hospital and doctor's office visits — potentially resulting in significant savings for the health care system.
Appleton said they will start in San Diego by serving "several hundred" patients with San Ysidro Health, but they hope to expand that number in the future by partnering with additional health systems.
Under Art Pharmacy's model, patients don't have to pay for arts activities — those costs are covered by health care partners.
Art and culture, Appleton said, "(have) been available in our communities since the beginning of humankind … We are in the business of connecting that work to systems so that more people can get access."
