ABOVE: Detail from Mark Collen’s CP II (2005), part of the Pain Exhibit, a collective show of art by and about sufferers of chronic pain. A new study says that art therapy can significantly ease pain.

Art therapy can have a measurable, positive effect on the levels of pain felt by cancer sufferers, scientists reported in the latest Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. The small study—only 50 subjects—evaluated cancer patients on their levels of pain before and after they’d spent an hour painting, drawing, or sculpting. Those who couldn’t physically handle a brush or a slab of clay on their own were able to direct while their art therapist wielded their weapon of choice.

It seems it paid off, although the authors of the study don’t go much further than concluding that the dabblers were “distracted” from their pain, not that an afternoon with a tray of watercolors was actually making the lame walk and the blind see. Although we’d already established that pain is good for art, now we know that art is good for pain, too.

LINK: Science Daily > Art Therapy Can Reduce Pain And Anxiety In Cancer Patients