Now doctors are prescribing museum visits to patients

In a fast-paced tech-driven world, where pressure is on many professionals to constantly raise the bar on performance and churn out innovative ideas to keep pace with developments, overall wellbeing is the need of the hour. Workplace pressure can take a toll on health in the long run, particularly among millennials striving to stay ahead in the rat race. High blood pressure, heart issues, anxiety and stress, and mental illness are the expected casualties. In such cases, overall wellbeing is the proverbial need of the hour.

To combat the fallout from such stress-related issues, physicians have been offering a range of solutions. Nature has turned out to be an effective remedy. Since 2018, doctors in Shetland, the Scottish archipelago in the Northern Atlantic, have been prescribing taking recourse to the outdoors to curb a range of illnesses.

In the UK, books are another salvation for patients.  Doctors in Bristol have been recommending self-help books which patients can collect from the library, according to a report.

Now as a feelgood healing factor, doctors in some countries have been asking their patients to learn from the world of culture, prescribing visits to the museum in the process.

In Neuchâtel, Switzerland, physicians have been allowing residents to visit museums as part of their healthcare plan. The initiative aims to promote mental and emotional well-being through cultural experiences.

However, the Swiss are not the first in starting such a trend. In Canada, a visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is now on the prescription books of many medical practitioners.

Doctors in one of Brussels’ largest hospitals have also been giving ‘museum prescriptions.

For more than a decade, the French city of Lille’s Palais des Beaux-Arts has deployed a kind of “museo-therapy” that uses the museum space and the treasures held within it to help treat patients from local hospitals.

But in September 2023, it signed a pact to offer 140 museum art therapy sessions over a year to patients who have been given a “museum prescription” by doctors.