ART CURE: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives (book review)
What the science really says about art, wellbeing, and the limits of creativity as medicine
When I was offered a review copy of Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives, I was immediately drawn to it. As someone who has spent 20 years researching the intersection of creativity and mental health, and interviewing hundreds of artists about how physical and mental health shape creative practice, any book promising to illuminate this connection gets my attention.
At the same time, I was curious whether Daisy Fancourt’s scientific research would align with what artists have been telling me for years. And I was skeptical. I have read many books about how art helps us, and most of them fail to take into account the shadow side and nuance that is always present and is, in truth, what interests me most.
The title itself raised questions. “The Science of How the Arts Save Lives” has the potential to be yet another book that romanticizes creativity as a cure all, ignoring the complexity and the genuine harm that can emerge at the intersection of art and wellbeing. But that is not what this book is at all. In fact, Art Cure directly addresses “when art doesn’t help,” and it does so with more rigor and clarity than any book I have found so far.
A Pleasant Surprise: Intellectual Honesty
What I found instead was precisely the nuanced, evidence based, intellectually honest exploration this field desperately needs. After attending a webinar Fancourt led about the book in January 2026, I reached out to her, and she clarified her approach in a way that captured exactly what makes Art Cure different:
“As I discuss in Art Cure, the arts are not a panacea, and there are examples I give of them doing far more harm than good. In the book I also debunk a whole host of myths about purported ‘benefits’ of the arts. I have actually found that acknowledging examples of hype and sensationalism strengthens discussions on arts and health because it separates fact from fiction, leads to more realistic and balanced discussions, and allows us to focus our attention on the really exciting high quality scientific evidence about how the arts can benefit our health.”
This intellectual honesty is the foundation of everything valuable in the book.
What Makes Art Cure Different
If you have read my work for long, you know that I often speak about two persistent problems in the arts and health field. On one side, there is the romanticized “suffering artist” narrative that suggests mental illness is necessary for great art. On the other, there are overly optimistic claims that “art heals” everything, positioning creative activity as a complete solution to complex health conditions.
Fancourt avoids both traps. Drawing on decades of rigorous scientific research from neuroscience, epidemiology, psychology, immunology, and behavioral science, she presents measurable health benefits of arts engagement while simultaneously debunking myths, acknowledging gaps in the evidence, and naming situations where arts engagement can cause harm.
This balanced approach separates Art Cure from wellness books that cherry pick studies or arts advocacy that relies solely on anecdote. Given Fancourt’s background, this should not have surprised me. She has published over 300 scientific papers and is among the most highly cited scientists in the world. When she makes a claim about cortisol levels, neural pathways, or stress response, it is backed by peer reviewed research.
The final sixty pages of the book are devoted entirely to references. These serve both as a jumping off point for further research in Creative Health and as visible proof of where her claims come from. We can see the work. Equally important, she is just as rigorous about what we do not know, what has been overstated, and where the arts can genuinely harm rather than help.
The Critical Question: When Art Does Not Heal
Too often, discussions of creativity and wellness ignore or minimize the ways art can damage health and wellbeing. Fancourt does not. Examples might be:
performance anxiety that can trigger real mental health crises.
toxic and hyper competitive environments in arts education and professional creative fields and the lasting psychological harm they can cause.
financial precarity endemic to arts careers and its impact on stress, stability, and physical health.
creative identity crises and how devastating they can be when a sense of self is tied to artistic output.
This matters enormously for working artists. Saying “art heals” to someone whose creative career has damaged their mental health, or whose illness has ended their ability to make art, is not just unhelpful. It is cruel.
Fancourt’s approach opens space for honest conversations about creative practice and wellbeing. She positions arts engagement as potentially beneficial while making it clear that it is not automatic, universal, or risk free. This honesty strengthens, rather than weakens, the case for supporting arts access and engagement.
You might also like to read:
The Science Behind Arts Engagement and Health
Art Cure argues that arts engagement should be considered a fifth pillar of health alongside diet, sleep, exercise, and nature. Fancourt organizes the evidence across six key areas.
She presents research showing that arts engagement can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, sometimes with effect sizes comparable to medication or therapy, while never suggesting that creative activities should replace clinical care. She traces the role of the arts in brain health across the lifespan, from early development to resilience against cognitive decline. She explores how music and movement decrease pain and stress through measurable physiological changes, not just self reported improvement.
Perhaps most surprisingly, she presents evidence showing that regular attendance at cultural events correlates with lower risk of loneliness, frailty, and mortality, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors. She demonstrates that arts engagement affects cardiovascular health, immune function, inflammation, and stress response systems throughout the body. And throughout each section, she carefully debunks exaggerated claims, calls out weak methodology, and distinguishes solid evidence from speculation. That, unsurprisingly, is the part that interests me most.
Who This Book Is For
Another strength of Art Cure is its expansive definition of the arts. Fancourt includes knitting, singing in the shower, doodling, dancing in your kitchen, reading novels, joining a choir, or taking a pottery class. This mirrors the care I take in my own work to unpack what we really mean by both “art” and “health.”
As a result, the book is valuable to many audiences.
For working artists and makers, it validates what many know intuitively but struggle to articulate, namely that creative practice directly impacts physical and mental health.
For therapists and healthcare practitioners, it provides evidence based rationale for arts engagement and social prescribing while clearly distinguishing this from formal arts therapy.
For arts organizations and cultural institutions, it offers a compelling case that the arts are not luxury goods but essential infrastructure for public health.
And for policy makers, it provides the research base needed to justify investment in arts access at scale.
Why This Matters for Creative Health
For me, Art Cure serves several crucial purposes.
It gives me scientific grounding to share with clients navigating chronic illness, depression, perimenopause, aging, or creative identity shifts.
It validates the reality that bodies and brains require different kinds and levels of creative engagement at different times.
And most importantly for my work developing Creative Health Cartography, it makes clear that the relationship between creativity and health runs in both directions. Health shapes creative practice, and creative practice shapes health outcomes.
That bidirectional relationship is more complex and more powerful than most people realize. Fancourt captures it with clarity, rigor, and humility.
From Research to Real Life
Unlike many academic books in this field, Art Cure translates theory into action. Each chapter ends with practical guidance that readers can implement immediately. Fancourt suggests that even thirty to sixty minutes per week of arts engagement can lead to measurable health benefits, and she offers concrete suggestions for choosing activities, building sustainable habits, and integrating creativity into existing healthcare routines.
She writes in a conversational style despite the depth of research, weaving human stories throughout the book without sentimentality. The stories matter, and so does the science. Neither alone tells the full truth. Art Cure insists that we need both.
A Field That Is Already Connecting
Finally, the book is already doing something important. It is connecting people. Through the January 2026 webinar alone, I encountered researchers, artists, and organizations from around the world and began conversations that expanded my thinking and my practice.
Creative Health is still a young field, particularly in the United States, and it can feel isolating to work at its edges. Art Cure makes clear that these questions about creativity and wellbeing matter everywhere, across cultures and contexts, even if the answers and applications vary. The research may be largely Western, but the questions it raises are universal.
And in fact, through this webinar, I’ve been lucky to connect with ROM (Rebecca Obiageli-Madu), an artist and researcher in Nigeria whose work explores art, mental health, and community healing. I’ve been very inspired by her work and words and which I’ve shared in this interview:
If you read this far, perhaps you liked the work. It does take work. Support it if you can!
More About Daisy Fancourt and The Art Cure here on Substack:
Here are some articles and interviews. Gratitude to all of the terrific people sharing work here on Substack including David Speed, Michael Kovnat, igotathingforchairs, Fashion Roundtable and Meg Pirie, EXPeditions, Lifetime Arts and AllThatHistory
There are also many, many interviews and articles about The Art Cure all around the web. I stay on top of new ones by subscribing to the newsletter for Social Biobehavioural Research Group which Fancourt heads up.
What a great review - thank you. Considered, balanced, informative, and thought-provoking. Time to order the book!
Thank you for this review. It is thoughtful and thorough. And, honestly, or funnily, made me not want to read this book! The first quote says that there are 8 billion artists on the planet. There aren’t. There are 8 billion potential artists. As an artist, I find making art to be one of the hardest things I do next to parenting. Being creative, or engaging in artist activities does not make someone an artist. The fact that this author seems to equate the latter with the former tells me she knows very little about what being an artist actually entails. My second question, is that she claims that surrealism and death metal and k-pop have been used for torture without elaborating. Or does she? I hope so. Because those are very strong claims that have the potential to damage artists who work within those genres. I also wonder, does she talk at all about how the quality of arts education matters? It is not enough to simply say we should have it. In the same way that math instruction can damage a student, so can arts instruction. Does she touch on this? Again, thank you for your review. I haven’t found too many others. It seems to have something valuable to add to the conversation. Even if I don’t read it, that is worth something.