For more than a year the Hospital Vall d’Hebron and the Museu Nacional have been working together to spread the cultural heritage, breaking all kinds of barriers –social, economic, of knowledge, etc.– and getting patients therapeutic benefits through the values and comfort that art can give.

Therefore, on February 11, 2019, the Health Minister, Alba Vergès, and the Culture Minister, Laura Borràs, together with the museum’s director, Pepe Serra, the hospital’s manager, Dr. Vicenç Martínez Ibáñez, and the Head of the hospital Psychiatric Service, Dr. Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga, presented the collaborative agreement between both institutions. A pioneer initiative that is part of a transversal programme recently approved by the Institut Català de la Salut (Catalan Health Institute) that seeks to advance in the exploitation of different artistic and cultural disciplines therapeutic value.

This agreement will start with a project that studies new art therapies around psychology, focussed on women with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with a diverse cultural background (immigrants or refugees) and that suffer from socially vulnerable situations. The treatment will combine new didactic strategies from the museum and the therapeutic principles of intervention stablished by Dr. Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga and his team.

The main focus of this project is to obtain more scientific evidence of arts benefits on our health and that get said benefits to be offered to future patients. They’re working so this initiative has some continuity beyond this particular therapy and, depending on the results, this experience is expected to be extended focused on other collectives.  

For more information about the art as a therapeutic resource, read our blog “Arts and health: challenges and opportunities”

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