Healing!

April 5th, 2025| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

Swiss doctors are doing something unprecedented. Writing prescriptions for strolls in public gardens, art galleries, and museums. Yes, so saith reporters for Reuters.

You got a chronic disease or mental health condition? Yup, take a stroll in a place of art or beauty.

The city of Neuchatel, in western Switzerland, recently launched this pilot project with doctors to help struggling residents and to promote physical activity.

Said Dr. Patricia Lehmann, a Neuchatel doctor taking part in the programme:

For people who sometimes have difficulties with their mental health, it allows them for a moment to forget their worries, their pain, their illnesses to go and spend a joyful moment of discovery.”

Five hundred prescriptions are being  handed out for free visits to four sites, including three museums and the city’s botanical garden.

One receipient, a 26-year-old woman suffering from burnout, was met by journalists at the Neuchatel Museum of Art and History, which has masterpieces by Claude Monet and Edgar Degas as well as a collection of automated dolls.

Said the patient/museum visitor, seeking to remain anonymous:

I think it brings a little light into the darkness.”

I am certain it does.

Authorities say the idea came from a 2019 World Health Organization study exploring the role of the arts in promoting health and dealing with illness that concluded that …

Results from over 3000 studies found evidence from a wide variety of disciplinary approaches and methodologies for the potential value of the arts in contributing to core determinants of health; playing a critical role in health promotion; helping to prevent the onset of mental illness and age-related physical decline; supporting the treatment or management of mental illness, noncommunicable diseases and neurological disorders; and assisting in acute and end-of-life care.”

During COVID-19 lockdowns, museum closures hit people’s well-being, said Julie Courcier Delafontaine, head of Neuchatel’s culture department.

That shutdown was a real trigger affecting people negatively, and we were really convinced that culture was essential for the well-being of humanity.”

The initiative will be tested for a year and could be expanded to other activities such as theater.

Added Dr. Lehmann:

I’m convinced that when we take care of people’s emotions, we allow them somehow to perhaps find a path to healing.”

I’m sure that helps. All kinds of things that are good, true, and beautiful.

Bach, especially! But, then again, I am biased!

However, of one thing I’m sure, because the Bible tells me so: God is the best source for healing (all healthcare workers [and even Bach], notwithstanding).

Be gracious to me, Yahweh, for I [am] frail; heal me, Yahweh, for my bones are terrified.
Psalm 6:2

Only he can heal! And heal, he does!

Yahweh, my God, I cried to You for help, and You healed me.
Psalm 30:2

Yes, only God, blessed be his name:

Bless Yahweh, my soul, and all that is within me—His holy name.
Bless Yahweh, my soul, and do not forget all His bestowments—
the One who pardons all your iniquities,
the One who heals all your diseases,
the One who redeems your life from the grave,
the One who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion,
the One who satiates your life with good.
Psalm 103:1–5

And so, all of us, brokenhearted ones, wounded ones—all of us, we respond:

Praise Yah, for it is good to make music to our God;
for it is pleasant, praise is fitting.
The One building Jerusalem is Yahweh,
the ones who are cast out of Israel, He gathers;
the One healing the brokenhearted,
and the One binding their wounds.
Psalm 147:1–3

SOURCE: Reuters; WHO Europe