Open AccessMobile Arts for Peace (MAP) at Home: Digital art-based mental health provision in response to COVID-19
Author(s) -
Ananda Breed,
Chaste Uwihoreye,
Eric Ndushabandi,
Matthew Elliott,
Kirrily Pells
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of applied arts and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2040-2465
pISSN - 2040-2457
DOI - 10.1386/jaah_00094_1
Subject(s) - mental health , psychosocial , the arts , indigenous , digital health , pandemic , psychology , public relations , sociology , political science , covid-19 , medicine , psychiatry , health care , ecology , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law , biology
This article will provide an example of how the ‘Mobile Arts for Peace (MAP): Online psychosocial support through the arts in Rwanda’ project used digital art-based workshops to facilitate social and community cohesion and mental health provision. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increased need for psychosocial support due to the economic and social pressures of lockdown and yet many individuals had less access to mental health provision. While many mental health services around the world went online, there was still a gap between the Global South and Global North in terms of digital literacy, access to smart phones and computers, and the variation between psychosocial support through individual vs. collective healing alongside Indigenous and traditional vs. western psychosocial approaches. Implications for the use of art-based digital methods as a tool for mental health provision during and after the wake of the pandemic are explored.