Music, dance, visual art, poetry.
The arts inspire us, teach us —
Rejuvenate and heal us.
They can challenge what we know
About ourselves, our worldview, and our work.
In this issue, we explore the interplay
Between the arts and science and medicine
To shape how we learn, teach, practice and heal.
The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity.
— Mae Jemison
By Jim Oldfield
As an engineer, physician and astronaut with a life-long interest in dance, Mae Jemison knows something about the interplay of the arts and sciences. The two realms are not just different sides of the same coin, she says, but manifestations of the same ability.
The influence of science on artistic creativity has often been stark. Consider the Fibonacci series and rule of thirds in visual design, and the advent of photography and electronic music.
But the effects of the arts on scientific creativity are less apparent. They’ve manifested in ideals such as the Renaissance man and detailed scientific drawings from the Enlightenment. And today, the shift from education in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts and math) is amid calls for socially relevant science.
One leading theory in the study of creativity is the componential approach, which was first proposed in the 1980s. It focuses on the related and required elements — creative thinking skills, ability or expertise, motivation and the social environment, which includes the learning of soft skills such as the ability to work with others and persevere in the face of failure.
This fall, UofTMed magazine asked Temerty Faculty of Medicine researchers in the basic sciences how the arts affect creativity in science. The takeaway? The role of the arts is often intangible and possibly profound. In an era of specialization, team science and wellness concerns, the role of the arts is likely more important than ever.
For Jen Gommerman (PhD ’98), the arts fuel scientific creativity.
“Science is rational. You form questions based on data, then take the next logical step,” says Gommerman, an immunology professor at Temerty Medicine who studies autoimmune conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, as well as links between the gut microbiome and central nervous system.
“But sometimes, you need to ask questions from inspiration — to look at data across the landscape of scientific literature to connect the dots or conceive an experiment,” she says. “It may sound airy, but I believe that kind of inspired thinking is nourished by artistic pursuits.”
As a graduate student, Gommerman acted in comic operas (Gilbert and Sullivan were favourites) and later won Temerty Medicine’s Hardi Cinader Prize, which recognizes both scientific scholarship and an interest in the arts. Today, she sings in a choir and plays the piano.
Gommerman says weekly singing practice was critical for her wellness as a student and kept her thinking sharp. “Ducking out of the lab for Friday rehearsals put my mind in a different place,” she says.
Music is still a respite, she adds. “I might have to devote a bit of time from the bench but the benefits, while not measurable, I can feel in my bones.”
Brian Cox (PhD ’07) learned collaboration by playing music.
Cox is an associate physiology professor at Temerty Medicine who studies embryonic development and placental dysfunction through systems biology, a collaborative and big-picture approach that integrates computer science, bioinformatics, physics, math and other fields.
As an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of Guelph, Cox played guitar in a space rock band with fellow scientists.
“Playing in a band, learning your part and integrating with others, learning to communicate — I think that teaches you to work with people, which can take different forms. It’s a lot like building collaborations and establishing a common language across disparate research areas.”
Cox believes that the arts and sciences share a common goal: to understand the world from a different perspective. “Asking questions, seeking deeper meaning, finding the truth — it’s an inherently creative process,” he says.
Before embarking on studies at the University of Toronto, Kaitlin Laverty considered a career in fashion or science illustration. Now a PhD candidate studying molecular genetics in the labs of Professors Tim Hughes and Quaid Morris, Laverty studies the design and implementation of computational methods to discover comprehensive binding specificity models for RNA-binding proteins.
Laverty sees a clear connection between her dual artistic and scientific pursuits. Both require deep focus to access creative thought, and sometimes solutions to problems arrive in unlikely ways.
“When I paint, I can zone out and become unconscious of the universe,” Laverty says. “The same thing happens at the desk when I’m doing research. Eight hours can pass and I haven’t moved.”
When not in the lab, Laverty’s multimedia art practice includes painting, ceramics, sewing and other fibre arts. “It’s often the same goal — solving a problem by trying different methods, new ideas, new media.”
She says the repetitive work of knitting keeps her hands busy but frees her mind for contemplation. “When I do art or knit, I find myself thinking about how to solve problems in research,” she says. “I come up with a lot of ideas doing that.”
For Lorraine Kalia (PhD ’04, MD ’06), participating in arts trained her for a life in science.
At age 10, Kalia entered the National Ballet School, living at the Church Street school residence and training daily with the renowned dance academy. After a short professional ballet career, she ultimately chose to pursue science. However, Kalia says her formative years at the barre have influenced her work in many ways.
Now a movement disorders neurologist with Temerty Medicine’s Department of Medicine, Kalia brings a dancer’s perspective to her research, which includes trying to find new drugs for people with Parkinson’s disease. She’s also seeking to understand how dance can benefit those with Parkinson’s.
Kalia, who is also a scientist with the Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases, says that dance training also prepared her for the rigours of critique and for solidifying ways to overcome failure. “Some qualities of being a dancer and a scientist are quite similar,” she says. “In dance, there is a constant push to improve. It motivates you to work harder.
“That’s important in the challenges that come with science,” she adds. “Failed experiments at the bench are commonplace in the lab. Like in ballet, failures require you to rethink, troubleshoot and repeat, so you must be both tenacious and creative.”
“We can’t say there is a clear and evidence-based benefit to scientific creativity from engagement with the arts,” says Oshin Vartanian, an adjunct associate psychology professor at the University of Toronto who studies the cognitive and neural bases of aesthetics and creativity.
“But I would say scientists are impacted by contextual factors — social, historical, cultural and artistic — and there is permeability among those factors that strongly affect how scientists think and create.”
A century of psychology studies suggest that abilities learned in one field do not transfer well to distant fields. For instance, a top athlete may have trouble transferring skills learned on the basketball court to restaurant work. But that transfer is more likely when skills and contexts are alike, as with a musician who can play multiple instruments and musical styles.
Evidence on the transfer of creative thinking from one domain to another — from art to science, for example — is more mixed.
“Cognitive psychologists tend to fall on one of two sides regarding the ability to think creatively: domain-specific or domain-general,” says Vartanian, who has co-edited books on the neuroscience of creativity and decision-making. As a scientist, he also studies cognition at Defence Research and Development Canada.
There is good evidence that much creative thought is domain-specific, he says, meaning that the constellation of factors that enable creative thinking in one area are often unique to that realm and acquired over a long period of time.
“The counterargument is that during the expression of creative thoughts, typical neural systems or networks come online, regardless of the domain,” he says.
Brain imaging with fMRI and other technologies supports this view and has shown that those networks span several brain areas.
During creative thought, three neural networks appear to be activated. The default mode network generates ideas through free association, daydreaming and mind-wandering. The executive control network prunes and reworks those ideas, and exerts control over other analytic functions. A third system, the salience network, helps prioritize between the two, and the interplay of all three is linked to creative thought.
Experiments to improve the connectivity and function of these systems are ongoing; they include interventions to train working memory and electronic stimulation of the brain. And studies that track brain structure and function over longer periods of time — through the stages of the creative process and human development — may yet discern whether artistic expression fosters creative science.
“Different factors lead to high levels of creativity but must be underpinned by motivation and drive,” Vartanian says.
“Science is obsessive work.”
So is art. Think of a prima ballerina’s dedication and years of training, and a researcher’s hours in the lab developing a molecule to carry a drug across the blood-brain barrier. Both rely on creative thought, but motivation and drive are what bring those thoughts to life.
By Erin Howe
Art has always been part of Grant Lum’s life.
As a teen, he played classical and jazz trombone. Later, he led a band and wrote for the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s annual student musical production Daffydil.
“For many of us who work in performing arts medicine, this is our day job,” Lum jokes . “ We’re just waiting for the big break.”
Lum (BSc ’89, MD ’92, PGME ’94) is a physician who treats injuries in artists. Many of the people he sees work in physical disciplines, such as dance or acrobatics, and face a variety of biomechanical demands related to their craft.
“As my own vocal coach used to say, ‘It’s all about the instrument,’” comments Lum.
Artists are prone to a variety of injuries. For example, a violinist tilts their head against their instrument’s chin rest, straining their neck. A ballet dancer develops osteoarthritis in their hips after years of dancing. Or, an actor in a musical develops back and shoulder pain because they are required to dance and sing while wearing a heavy headdress as part of their costume.
Many artists’ injuries are similar to those sustained by professional athletes. But others are unique to artists, says Lum, an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Temerty Medicine.
Lum has been a physician consultant to sports organizations including the Canadian Football League, the NHL Players’ Association and Squash Canada. He has worked for Ballet Jörgen and Toronto Dance Theatre, and been in the wings to treat actors during Mirvish theatre performances.
A hockey player might face a greater risk of acute injury during games, which are once or twice a week. But for artists who perform six nights plus two matinees a week or who do a nightly show for weeks at a time on tour, the volume of work can create or compound injuries.
* * *
Audiologist Marshall Chasin helps musicians prevent and manage hearing loss.
Whether the score is heavy metal or Mozart, music can register at 120 decibels — the sonic equivalent of the noise generated by a chainsaw or motorcycle engine.
And though all musicians are exposed to loud sounds, the degree of exposure varies.
“A classical musician often works five or six days a week. They practise three or four hours a day, perform three hours at a time and then, they might teach three or four hours a day,” says Chasin, who is also the director of auditory research at Musicians’ Clinics of Canada and an adjunct linguistics professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science. “But a rock and roller may pick up their guitar for a Friday night gig and then may not perform again for another week or two.”
Chasin also prioritizes stress management at his clinic. He points to research that shows that stress can increase a person’s susceptibility to hearing loss.
Under stressful conditions, including negative feelings toward a set list, the adrenal glands emit high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which causes an increase in glutamate, a neurotransmitter that is toxic to the ear, explains Chasin.
He explains that while a pop musician likely writes and chooses their own music, members of an orchestra have to play what their artistic director chooses.
“It could be a piece the musician loves, or it could be a song they’ve played as part of a long-running show like Cats. It’s great music, but not after the 300th time playing the same thing every night,” says Chasin.
Your identity, work, purpose and passion are all tethered to being able to use your body as your instrument
* * *
Second-year medical student Ryan Booth has already had his time in the limelight.
After training with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, Booth joined the National Ballet of Canada as an apprentice. He danced in the company for three years before moving to Europe to work for the Vienna State Ballet and Royal Danish Ballet. He spent nine years dancing professionally before entering Temerty Medicine’s MD Program in 2021.
Booth, who received the Carlo Fidani Student Bursary, recalls the delicate balance of enjoying his first career while planning his next act. A ruptured meniscus prompted the dancer to think about what might wait in the wings for him after his final bow.
“It’s terrifying to be injured. You’re immediately sidelined from your work, and the setback can feel monumental,” he says. “Your identity, work, purpose and passion are all tethered to being able to use your body as your instrument. It’s debilitating physically and emotionally.”
An injury isn’t the only factor that can affect an artist’s mental health.
In addition to other conditions experienced by the broader population, such as depression and substance use, performance anxiety and financial worries can weigh heavily on an artist’s mind.
According to statistics gathered for the Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian artists, on average, earned just $17,300 in 2019 — less than half the median of all workers.
* * *
Paul Uy (PGME ’13 & ’16) is a lecturer in Temerty Medicine’s Health, Arts and Humanities Theme and a psychotherapist at the Al & Malka Green Artists’ Health Centre at UHN. In his office, one of the struggles he helps people with is reconciling their perceptions of productivity against societal and economic pressures.
“These are people who dedicate their lives and their energies to creating something meaningful for society,” says Uy. “And right now, our society doesn’t really value the artistic process as a vital component of society.”
Uy notes that an artist’s creativity and originality is a strength for working through psychotherapy. A person’s craft may provide a medium for them to express emotion, be a creative process for problem-solving or a resource for understanding the challenges that brought them to his office.
And as much as they may use their art to make sense of the world for themselves, artists also help others to come to grips with their problems.
“Art is essential for society, and creative people help fuel resilience in others,” says Uy. “We all take refuge in music, books, movies and other works of art to help us face the consequences of being human in a rapidly changing world.”
Sarah Kim is a family physician, assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and dancer-in-residence with the Health, Arts and Humanities Theme. She is also part of a team using dance to explore practices of care in institutions. With the support of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, Kim and her collaborators will make a film that employs dance to examine the trinity of physician, patient and caregiver. Through this endeavour, Kim hopes to inspire health care professionals to embrace mindful movement as an act of self-care and as part of their continuing professional development.
Illustration by Chanelle Nibbelink
HOW THE ARTS CREATE CONNECTION IN VIRTUAL HEALTHCARE
Story by Meagan Gillmore
When the pandemic pushed our lives online, the arts offered a way to connect in virtual spaces. Here, members of the Temerty Medicine community share how they used storytelling, acting and visual arts to help bridge the digital divide.
Elizabeth Mansfield (MSc ’93, PhD ’11) believes digital storytelling gives patients a strong voice.
As a medical sociologist and qualitative researcher with Trillium Health Partners Institute for Better Health, Mansfield uses digital storytelling, photos and voice recordings to research the health care experiences of patients, families and caregivers.
In one project, women from diverse backgrounds share their stories about being treated for breast cancer. In another, young adults needing mental health support and their families combine photos and recorded stories to describe their experiences accessing those supports.
“The process allows people to frame their own experiences,” says Mansfield, noting that the contributed stories and photos don’t have the constraints of a questionnaire or interview. As well, the process creates a record of their experience that Mansfield says “they can take away and use as they would like.”
Mansfield is also an assistant professor with the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she found art and technology enhanced connection for participants in the program.
For example, when protocols moved her research projects online, weekly Zoom meetings replaced a weekend storytelling workshop for breast cancer patients. The weekly online chats allowed the participants to get to know each other over a longer period of time than they would have had in the weekend workshop. A strong community formed over Zoom. Even though the project has now concluded, Mansfield notes that the participants still keep in touch.
Isabel Fryszberg (BSc ’82) discovered that digital platforms offer a new way to connect with clients in her private arts-based therapy practice.
The adjunct lecturer with Temerty Medicine’s occupational science and therapy department (OS&T) has more than three decades of experience as an arts-based occupational therapist and was recognized in 2020 with an OS&T alumni achievement award for her work in the field.
Fryszberg is also a painter, filmmaker and songwriter and musician and has created award-winning music videos. She brings a sense of freedom and exploration to her practice, which helps clients develop creativity and resiliency through art. “You never have to teach a child how to pick up a crayon and draw, do you?” she asks. “They just do it. And that’s the kind of feeling I like to give back to adults.”
When physical distancing protocols prevented Fryszberg from seeing clients in person, the therapist pivoted to video calls, connecting with clients to discuss strategies for health and well-being from the comfort of home.
One client had worked as a professional artist before a brain tumour resulted in cognitive impairments to her short-term memory. When visitors were prevented from visiting the long-term care home where she lived, the artist began to suffer from feelings of isolation and despair.
Fryzsberg turned to the arts for connection. During weekly video calls, the two sang together and discussed the lives and works of Georgia O’Keeffe and Emily Carr, two of the client’s favourite painters. Engaging in familiar and beloved topics “elicited enthusiastic engagement and coherent and meaningful conversation,” says Fryszberg, and brought feelings of calm and delight to the client.
Fryszberg finds that virtual meetings remove the formality that can be associated with meeting in an office environment and foster a fresh take on practitioner-client interactions.
“It’s not like a clinical session where you’re sitting in a chair,” she says. “It’s playful and not threatening. It feels a little casual, but we’re actually getting down to business.”
ART OFFERS A SAFE CONTAINER TO EXPLORE AND TO MAKE MEANING WHILE ALSO CONTAINING US
The pandemic also temporarily halted in-person instruction for Temerty Medicine’s Standardized Patient Program. Standardized patients are specially trained actors who play the role of patients in training and assessment scenarios in the MD Programs to help refine the interpersonal communication skills critical for effective and inclusive healthcare.
“Learners can try things out in a safe space,” says Lori Nancy Kalamanski, an actress with 20 years of experience playing the role of a standardized patient.
When the pandemic shifted Kalamanski’s work to virtual, she found herself helping MD learners acquire a new set of skills needed to communicate with patients outside of the traditional office setting.
Video calls changed the dynamic as the trainees learned to adjust to taking patient narratives, providing advice and sometimes delivering heavy news amid domestic disruptions from children, delivery drivers and more.
“There were lots of challenges that came up for learners who were treating patients virtually,” says Kalamanski.
In the digital world, art can also bring strangers together and create a sense of community and collaboration. That’s the premise behind a new project from the health equity, art, research, technology (HeART) Lab.
“Art has the potential to combat isolation,” says Allison Crawford (PGME ’05), an associate professor in Temerty Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and the founding director of HeART Lab, which uses art and technology to promote well-being and health equity by co-designing projects with communities.
At the HeART Lab, Crawford and colleagues are exploring how public art installations can further mental health and well-being. In October 2022, it launched the “Digital Amphitheatre at the Garden of the Greek Gods,” a collaborative digital storytelling platform connected to a public art installation by late Canadian sculptor E.B. Cox.
Cox’s sculptures of mythical figures, including Aphrodite and Hercules, are located on the grounds of Toronto’s Exhibition Place. Visitors to the installation will find HeART Lab QR codes by some of the statues. The codes, which can be scanned by a smartphone, take visitors to an online community to share stories about and personal reflections on themes related to the installation. They can also use the QR codes to project images of the sculptures to other locations, allowing anyone to experience the artwork from anywhere.
Visitor contributions are shared on the project’s website, allowing people to read them and contribute their own thoughts.
Crawford hopes the project will help foster a sense of community based on observing and interacting with the sculptures.
“Feelings that we all deal with independently and as a collective benefit from being shared,” says Crawford. “Especially during COVID, feelings that ranged from uncertainty, grief and, even at times, gratitude and joy, could overwhelm us.
“Art can be a guide in helping us find an expression for feelings and can help us share them with others,” she continues. “Art offers a safe container to explore and to make meaning while also containing us. We’ve really seen the arts as a source of community-building and hope.
For more than 75 years, the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s biomedical communications (BMC) program has married art and science to help physicians and later the general public understand the world in new and beautiful ways.
Founded in 1945, BMC is the only Canadian program — and one of just five in North America — to offer highly specialized graduate-level training to develop visual material for health promotion, medical education and as part of the process of scientific discovery.
Beginning as the Art as Applied to Medicine (AAM) Certificate Program, it became a bachelor of science degree (BScAAM) in the 1960s. Then in the 1990s, the program evolved again with a new name — biomedical communications — and a new mandate: to offer instruction at the graduate level.
Over the decades, the illustrators’ art supplies have advanced as quickly as the scientific and medical subjects they depict.
In the early days, program founder Maria Torrence Wishart and contemporaries Dorothy Foster Chubb and Elizabeth Blackstock used carbon dust, pen and ink, and paint to create anatomical illustrations for medical textbooks and teaching materials. By the latter half of the 20th century, photography, video and 35mm slides added new instruments to the communicators’ tool box, and their work began to reach lay audiences.
Today, biomedical illustrators rely on advanced technology to communicate more complex subjects. Digital animation and design platforms are now the go-to tools for illustration, while gaming systems and augmented reality programs are at the forefront for animations and surgical technique simulations.
Advances in science and medicine have also influenced the field, offering new opportunities to showcase discoveries at the cellular or even molecular level, as seen in the illustrations by BMC alumni Naveen Devasagayam and Sam Holmes that accompany this story.
The work of biomedical communicators has found a broader audience, too. Once aimed exclusively at scientists and health care professionals, medical illustration and animation now appear in medical advertising, educational gaming, public health campaigns and nightly news stories.
“Portrait of a cell,” 2015 by Naveen Devasagayam (MScBMC ’15). Contemporary medical illustrators combine scientific knowledge and design expertise to bring biomedical data to life. In this image, Devasagayam demonstrates the variety of molecular populations inside a eukaryotic cell.
“Retina,” 1943 by Elizabeth Blackstock (DSAM ’47). Before it was possible to obtain high-quality photographs of the retina, medical illustrators used watercolours or gouache to capture the nuances of retinal form, texture and colour.
“Encoding Nature’s Chemicals,” still from digital animation, 2016 by Sam Holmes (MScBMC ’15). Holmes created a digital animation about the search for novel therapeutics within the DNA of microbes in the environment.
“Facial anatomy,” 1943 by Dorothy Foster Chubb. Chubb was a member of a small team of women who illustrated Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy, produced at the University of Toronto and now in its 15th edition. This carbon dust illustration bears the marks of its journey through the publishing process.
“Cranial nerves,” undated by Stephen Goltra Gilbert, a long-time faculty member in Biomedical Communications, and a master of pen-and-ink. This technique was a staple for medical illustrators before the digital age.
“Glaucoma,” 2014 by Kateryna Procunier (MScBMC ’15). In this digital illustration, alumna Procunier depicts the cause and progression of glaucoma and its effects on the visual field.
“Flu Facts,” (animation stills), 2015 by Natalie Cormier (MScBMC ’15). Animation now plays a large role in biomedical visualization. Cormier created the 3D animation as a Master’s student in the BMC program, to explain the importance of seasonal vaccination.
“KneeMo,” app screen captures, 2022 by Shehryar (Shay) Saharan (MScBMC ’22). Along with animation, interactive media is now an important tool in biomedical visualization. KneeMo, created as a BMC Master’s research project, is an online, interactive, educational platform for learning knee biomechanics.
Amy Ke Er Zhang, “A Matter of Life & Cell Death,” 2021 by Amy Ke Er Zhang (MScBMC ’22). Zhang uses molecular data and digital rendering to explain the process of cell death and the mechanism of action of two molecules used in the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Photo by Mark Bennett
How Indigenous art weaves education, inclusion and healing into patient care spaces
Story by Meagan Easton
A few years ago, Sara Roque found herself in a hospital imaging department she hadn’t been in before, despite countless appointments related to her cancer diagnosis. “It had no windows and was really dark and dingy, which made an already lonely experience worse,” she says. “But just outside the waiting room, there was this large painting by Rita Letendre, one of my favourite Indigenous artists. I was so emotional when I saw it. Feeling an Indigenous presence and spirit totally changed my relationship with that place.”
Roque — a documentary filmmaker of Anishinaabe descent and a former Indigenous Arts Officer at the Ontario Arts Council — is the sister of Lisa Richardson (PGME ’05 & ’08), the associate dean of inclusion and diversity at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. They share a belief in the power of Indigenous art to not only create a more welcoming space for Indigenous patients, health care providers and students but to assert Indigenous world views on medicine and healing in the Western health care system.
“I’ve always loved art and years ago, I realized that Indigenous art facilitates any teaching about Indigenous health and ways of knowing and being,” says Richardson, an associate professor in Temerty Medicine’s Department of Medicine. “When people are engaging with art, they tend to be in an open-minded state. They’re less reactive, less critical and more receptive to considering things that are unfamiliar to them.”
Throughout her career as a clinician, educator and researcher, Richardson, who previously was the strategic advisor on Indigenous health at Temerty Medicine, has worked to attract and support Indigenous medical students and faculty while integrating Indigenous perspectives into medical education at the University of Toronto and across Canada. “One of our country’s biggest ongoing health inequities is Indigenous Peoples’ poor health outcomes,” she says.“ Part of my job involves ensuring that health care providers truly understand the historical trauma and ongoing racism that affect Indigenous People, so they can get the culturally safe and appropriate care they deserve, but often don’t receive.”
Richardson uses Indigenous art as an educational tool in most aspects of her work. “I always include some pieces in major presentations,” she says, adding that the artwork naturally starts difficult — but vital — conversations.
Roque agrees, saying, “Art is a much more effective starting point for dialogue because it’s not as contentious as language.”
Richardson, Roque and Allison Crawford (PGME ’05), an associate professor in Temerty Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, are producing an arts-based learning resource that explores how to incorporate Indigenous medicine and knowledge into mainstream health care. For the first phase of their project, called The Good Medicine Collective, they gathered stories digitally from Indigenous health care providers and Elders. Now they’re complementing those narratives with Indigenous art and producing a book to be used by medical faculty and students.
Until the pandemic, Richardson and Crawford also taught a course in which they brought medical students and residents to the Art Gallery of Ontario to spend an evening viewing Indigenous art. “The best sessions were when an Elder or Knowledge Keeper joined us,” says Richardson, who hopes to resume the course soon. “I remember one medical student looking at Norval Morrisseau’s ‘Man Changing into Thunderbird’ and commenting that the circles seemed flat and one-dimensional. The Elder explained that the circles are portals to the spirit world. It was a memorable demonstration of how we have different ways of looking based on our backgrounds.”
Visitors from all backgrounds encounter artwork by female-identifying and two-spirit Indigenous artists dispersed throughout Women’s College Hospital, where Richardson is the Strategic Lead in Indigenous Health. Co-curated by Roque and Nêhiyaw artist and curator Elwood Jimmy, the “Seeds of Change” collection share a common theme of healing. Roque says she relied on her experience as a patient when deciding where to place the pieces, opting for a number of locations known to induce anxiety, such as the security desk, acute-care waiting room and blood collection lab.
Nadia McLaren, an Anishinaabe artist and filmmaker and the manager of Indigenous Health Education at the hospital, is collaborating with Roque to ensure that a QR code is created for every piece in the art collection. The code will link to information about the artist, and the themes and meaning in their art. “It will be an important addition to Indigenous Health education here at WCH,” says McLaren, who often uses art as a tool in her staff workshops on cultural sensitivity and Indigenous healing strategies.
Simply having the art visible at the hospital communicates an effort toward making spaces “safer” for Indigenous Peoples, says McLaren. It can also help health care providers spark conversations and build relationships in a more organic way than bluntly asking patients about their Indigenous identity. “A clinician may notice a patient staring at a painting, and they could ask, ‘What do you think of that?’” she says. “It can be a meaningful beginning for sharing stories, rather than just a process of ticking off boxes.”
Indigenous art speaks from and to our hearts. It reminds us that health is about our whole selves.
For non-Indigenous patients and health care providers, McLaren sees the art as a visual cue for re-evaluating ingrained perceptions. “It’s important to be reminded of and celebrate the beauty, presence and strength of Indigenous People because the Canadian educational systems, based on colonial agendas, taught us all that our ceremonies, languages, governance and our own educational systems (including our art forms) were ‘uncivilized’ and ‘less than,’” says McLaren. “We know, and there is heartbreaking proof, that these attitudes still show up in Western biomedical health care systems.”
There’s a tendency in medicine to take a negative, deficit-based approach to Indigenous Peoples’ health, says Richardson. “The power of Indigenous art is that it can flip that to a strengths-based lens with its striking presence.”
The Office of Indigenous Health at Temerty Medicine has some Indigenous artworks on display, but Richardson is thinking bigger by considering how the new Temerty Building, now in the planning stages, can include Indigenous works and design features. Still, she emphasizes that what appears on the walls of medical institutions is just a first step. “It’s a very powerful symbol to see your own people and identity represented, but hanging Indigenous art should be part of larger systemic changes,” says Richardson.
Along with highlighting themes of resilience, Indigenous art can reveal the harms that need acknowledgement and redress in medical institutions. It can be overtly political, with images that illuminate the damaging historical and contemporary effects of colonialism on Indigenous Peoples’ health. “Sometimes it’s disrupting rather than soothing,” says Roque. “It’s meant to unsettle and unseat people’s assumptions.”
Richardson often features Indigenous art on her Twitter feed, and this fall she posted a photo by Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore called “Fringe” which depicts a reclining woman with a long scar across her back. What appears to be blood trickling from the wound is, in fact, strings of beads. “It represents the ongoing effects of colonialism on Indigenous bodies in a dramatic way that’s totally different from policy, journalism and any other texts,” says Richardson. “It intrigues people, making them want to know more.”
Both Roque and Richardson are quick to point out that there’s no single Indigenous perspective on medicine but there are some shared concepts of health and healing evident in Indigenous art. “In the usual biomedical model of health, we think about physical health in isolation from emotional, spiritual and mental dimensions,” says Richardson. “Indigenous teachings have a much more holistic vision of health that includes all of these factors.”
Take the work of Dene artist and bioethicist Lisa Boivin. In Boivin’s digital painting “Sharing Bioethics,” the traditional Dene circle of medicine (replete with images of sacred land-based medicine such as strawberries, flowers and a tobacco pouch) literally overlaps with the biomedical circle of medicine (represented by a white coat, X-ray and medical instruments), creating a new circle of possibility. Several pieces in the Women’s College Hospital collection feature plant-based medicine, signaling the institution’s openness to their presence alongside biomedical treatments. In late 2020, the hospital’s Centre for Wise Practices in Indigenous Health — where McLaren is based — and Temerty Medicine opened the Gathering Space, a dedicated area for Indigenous students, staff, faculty and community members to safely access traditional medicines and exercise their ceremonial practice rights.
“Surveys show that more than half of Indigenous People are interested in — or have received — care from Traditional Healers, Elders or Knowledge Keepers,” says Richardson, noting that these spiritual guides frame illness and health differently from Western medicine. Pointing to Morrisseau’s “Man Changing into Thunderbird” as an illustration, she says that Indigenous wisdom considers sickness a transformation or transition, not a loss of self. “When my sister [Roque] was first diagnosed, her healers encouraged her to think of herself as different from — not less than — before.”
Roque says that shift in perspective helped, just like it helped to see that beautiful painting on the hospital wall a few years back. “Medical knowledge and medical spaces are all centred in the head,” she says. “Indigenous art speaks from and to our hearts. It reminds us that health is about our whole selves. Bringing that art into medical education and patient care spaces will maybe bring a little heart into health care. And if it makes one person feel better, that would be really meaningful.”
Illustrations by Mary Kirkpatrick
Story by Sharon Aschaiek
Artistic expression has long been known to benefit our well-being, productivity and relationships.
Here, three members of the Temerty Medicine community share what art-making brings to their lives.
PhD Candidate, Computational Biology in Molecular Genetics
What do studying cancer in woodchucks and singing opera arias have in common? More than you might think, says Zoe Clarke, a part-time mezzo-soprano who says her work on the stage bolsters her work in the lab.
At the Biological Systems Lab led by Professor Gary Bader, of the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, Clarke is examining how liver cancer develops in groundhogs infected with hepatitis B. The work involves sequencing the rodent’s expressed genes, and using data visualization and analysis software to identify the cancer’s pathways, interactions and patterns. In May 2021, Nature Protocols published her first scientific paper. It was on best practices for annotating single-cell transcriptomic (RNA) maps.
Examining the nuances of large data sets is time-consuming, painstaking work, but Clarke has an advantage — she is used to summoning intense focus to learn songs from operas by Schubert, Mozart and Tchaikovsky (her favourite composer). This sharp focus is especially needed when she sings in languages other than English and German, in which she’s fluent. Operas in Russian, French and Italian require a careful word-by-word analysis to ensure proper pronunciation and intonation.
“Just like science, opera requires a lot of discipline,” says Clarke, who discovered her passion for the art form in Grade 11 when taking voice lessons from an opera singer. “It requires you to be very studious and dedicated.”
Clarke studied both biology and music as an undergraduate student at Queen’s University. Then in 2019, the summer after graduation, she joined other emerging artists at a six-week opera training program in Edmonton. That fall, she pivoted to computational biology, driven by her fascination with the biology of cancer, enjoyment of research and aptitude for the mathematical modelling of data.
Another opera skill she brings to her scientific work is connecting with audiences.
“The flair for performance in opera, I can see it bleeding into my scientific presentations,” she says. “I often feel like I’m performing rather than presenting because I’m so invested in how the audience is feeling … I want people to be enjoying themselves and actively interested in what I’m doing.”
Associate Dean, Clinical Affairs & Professional Values Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Pier Bryden (PGME ’97 & ’01) turned to art as a way to cope with the fear and tedium of the pandemic and, as she puts it, quit her “ruminating” and “doomscrolling.” Already the co-author of two non-fiction books about psychiatry, she was drawn to historical fiction as a way to write with fewer restrictions and more creativity.
“Writing fiction would allow me to put my professional self and obligations somewhat to one side and just write a bit more selfishly and with less observance of constraints,” says Bryden, a staff psychiatrist at The Hospital for Sick Children. “I could just play and explore. It felt very freeing.”
What captured Bryden’s imagination as a subject for a fiction piece was the remarkable but little-known story of France’s first female psychiatrist, Constance Pascal. Born in Romania in 1877 and educated in medicine at the University of Paris, Pascal was the first woman in France to be appointed medical director of a psychiatric hospital. The prejudices she encountered in the all-male domain did not impede her pioneering work, which included founding one of the country’s first schools for children with severe learning difficulties, and reforming asylum practices and psychotherapeutic interventions to better reflect the social and biological causes of mental illness.
Researching and writing historical fiction about Pascal’s clinical work and personal life was, for Bryden, “utterly absorbing and fascinating.” The process became meaningful as she connected with Pascal’s granddaughter and individuals affiliated with the last asylum she had led. Pascal’s advocacy for other emerging female psychiatric nurses inspired Bryden. And she enjoyed the challenge of integrating the broader social context: extreme discrimination against women, growing far-right sentiment in Europe and the rise of eugenics in medicine.
“The work allowed me to keep my brain busy in a very constructive and enjoyable way, and I also learned a lot,” Bryden says. “It allowed me to delve into a very different world.”
A voracious reader current on the cognitive psychology literature that links engaging with narrative and greater empathy, Bryden feels certain that fiction writing has given her an edge in her psychiatry practice.
“Reading opens you up to others’ experiences in a very deep way,” she says. “It allows me to think of my patients in terms of myriad potential individual life narratives, family histories and diverse cultural backgrounds.”
Art really helps me with de-stressing and supporting my mental health. It allows me to just be present in the moment and relax
Second-year MD Student
Included in the portfolio of visual artist Amanda Mac is one of her favourite artworks, a digital painting of a koi fish swimming in a pond. Mac says that in her Buddhist culture, koi represent perseverance because of their ability to swim against the current to reach their destination.
That is useful symbolism for Mac to recall as she enters the second year of her medical education. Drawing and painting have long been joyful creative outlets for her, pursuits that have helped her successfully navigate the transition from her bachelor’s program in health sciences at the University of Ottawa to the heavier academic demands of medical school.
“I’m learning that a huge part of being in medicine is making sure that you’re taking care of yourself and building personal resilience. Before you can help others, you have to make sure you’re looking after yourself,” says Mac, who is concurrently completing Temerty Medicine’s one-year Graduate Diploma in Health Research. “Art really helps me with de-stressing and supporting my mental health. It allows me to just be present in the moment and relax.”
Mac’s diverse artworks also depict breakfast in bed, an animated jellyfish, a magical mermaid and multiple classic scenes of downtown Toronto: a streetcar with the CN Tower in the background, the Flatiron Building and the Kim’s Convenience shop of CBC sitcom fame. Entirely self-taught, she learns techniques through YouTube tutorials and creates on her tablet using software such as Sketchbook, Procreate and Adobe Fresco. She has an online shop in the global artist marketplace Redbubble where she sells her art as prints, coasters, clocks and tote bags.
Artmaking, Mac says, has equipped her with the capacity for out-of-the-box thinking that she believes will allow her to approach her medical career more dynamically.
“In art, there is no right or wrong way to do things,” she says. “I think that can be helpful when you’re speaking with a patient or working through a medical case because there are so many different factors to take into account.”
One of those key factors, she says, is the patient’s own account of their health challenges. Since Mac often takes on commissioned projects, she understands the importance of paying close attention to a client’s wishes to achieve their artistic vision and likens that process to working with a patient.
“I see medicine as a collaborative effort between the physician and patient,” she says. “It requires a lot of deep listening and back-and-forth communication.”
Illustration by Mahdiba Chowdhury
By Emily Kulin
Federal census statistics tell us that nearly 65 per cent of Canadians report holding a personal religious affiliation. Yet, as psychiatrist Yusra Ahmad (MD ’07, PGME ’13) has observed, health care professionals often fail to recognize the role faith can have in shaping their patients’ overall health and wellbeing.
“Each of us is a whole person, yet medicine has adopted a very ‘divide and conquer’ approach to the human experience, and even to the human body,” says Ahmad, a clinical lecturer in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. “For many people of faith, our religious beliefs are an essential part of who we are. Without holistic care, mistrust can form between patients and their care providers. Things can get missed or misdiagnosed.”
Today, Ahmad is on a mission to create space for the soul in psychiatry. In 2017, she founded Mindfully Muslim — a trauma-informed group therapy program that combines mindfulness-based interventions with Islamic wisdom and prayer.
“Employing the secular definition, mindfulness is about paying attention — training your attention to focus on a particular element, like your breathing, or learning to become a curious observer of your thoughts, feelings and body, without judgment and with compassion,” says Ahmad, who also works with refugees from around the world at Women’s College Hospital’s Crossroads Clinic and the New Beginnings Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, as well as with unhoused clients at shelters and drop-in centres throughout Toronto.
“Yet, for me as a Muslim, mindfulness also has the added layer of God consciousness — infusing an awareness of a Higher Power and Creator, of assuming a posture of humility and a gratitude to this Oneness, this Source in everything I do.”
While Ahmad had long been interested in developing a faith-based program to respond to traumas resulting from widespread and longstanding Islamophobia, she was ultimately inspired to take action following Donald Trump’s election in 2016, as well as several high-profile incidents of anti-Muslim hate, including Trump’s much-maligned executive order banning travel from Muslim-majority countries and the mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque in January 2017.
“Previously, the timing wasn’t right or I had other things I was struggling with myself,” she explains. “I was afraid. I turned down jobs to do this. It was a huge financial sacrifice for me personally, but I couldn’t wait any longer. The community needed this.”
Much to her disappointment, Ahmad’s decision to pursue Mindfully Muslim was at first met with confusion — and even unease — from many of her professional peers.
“A lot of people were very uncomfortable whenever I brought up the integration of faith with mindfulness practices,” says Ahmad. “It’s incredibly ironic, of course, because mindfulness originated in religion. Even when we do talk about the connection to religion, mindfulness practitioners tend to focus exclusively on its Buddhist roots. But mindfulness exists in every faith tradition. Perhaps it takes different forms, or is expressed differently, but it exists across the board.”
More recently, Ahmad has been heartened by what she sees as signs of change in how the medical profession collectively views religion and faith.
“Things are slowly shifting. For example, I have been invited to participate in the upcoming Ontario Medical Association Town Hall on Spirituality in Medicine and Recovery. Such an event would have been unheard of even a few years ago.”
She also sees medical schools’ embrace of equity, diversity and inclusion policies as an opportunity for further transformation.
“Faith is an important part of many people’s lives, including many physicians,” says Ahmad. “Maybe some of us wear it more openly on our sleeves, like me, but there are many others out there who have been taught – either consciously or unconsciously – to downplay this side of themselves.
“Ultimately, I think it has much to do with who is being admitted into the profession and who has traditionally done the admitting. We need doctors and leaders who truly represent our patient communities.”
Renee Bailey is in the second year of the MD Program and a poet and spoken word artist. In August 2022, Bailey performed her original poem “From Where Did You Come?” at Temerty Medicine’s annual Stethoscope Ceremony to welcome new MD students into the program. In this piece, Bailey reminds students to remember their beginnings as they move towards their futures.
Story by Deanna Cheng
Allan Peterkin has been working to integrate the arts and humanities into medical education for more than a decade — but his efforts today feel especially timely.
“After more than two years of pandemic life, physicians everywhere are exhausted and burned out,” says Peterkin, head of the Health, Arts and Humanities (HAH) Theme. “What the health profession needs now is reflection and renewal. The arts and humanities can help learners and practitioners find their passion and purpose again.”
In 2009, Peterkin launched the HAH Theme as an informal initiative at Mount Sinai Hospital. Health Humanities exposes learners and faculty to arts-based learning and the humanities to improve critical thinking skills to enhance sensitivity and compassion in patient interactions and to develop better self-care, career satisfaction and community building.
Participants explore a range of creative disciplines including the visual arts, creative writing, theatre, film and music, as well as humanities subjects such as history, philosophy and literary studies.
The program also provides practising clinicians with opportunities to engage in dialogue with humanities scholars — shaping discourse around person-centred care, social justice, health advocacy and accountability.
“Ultimately,” says Peterkin, “the goal is to use the arts to remind health care providers of their humanity — as well as that of the patients and communities they serve.
“Medicine can be about patterns and predictability, but emphasizing narrative and storytelling leads us back to the unique subjective experience of each person. Arts-based learning allows us to take the perspective of others, challenge our assumptions and recognize humanity in all its diversity and difference.
“If you’re checking in with yourself and what you’re thinking and feeling, you’re mindful and present with your patient — and can deliver better care.”
The University of Toronto has rapidly become a leader in the emerging field of health humanities. Peterkin and his team have worked to share their experience with peers across Canada by hosting the country’s first annual conference on health humanities in medical education.
The program has also benefited from the increasing awareness of its value. In 2020, the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) recommended the widespread integration of arts and humanities in North American physician education.
Second-year medical students Matthew Cho, Samuel Maclennan and Yina Shan, know how medical education and the humanities can work together. They co-lead the student club ArtBeat, which weaves the humanities into medical curricula through groups focused on health history, medical ethics and narrative-based medicine, as well as book clubs, improv troupes and art clubs.
“ArtBeat helped me find a community of like-minded individuals,” says Cho. “The medical humanities gave me the tools to see the structural issues and systemic barriers that affect patients, their stories and the care we provide. It has become an essential part of my medical education.
“As health care becomes more complex and as new technologies emerge, the human element of health care is something that can’t be replicated,” says Maclennan. “The medical humanities are a critical component of a physician’s training, especially for the rapidly changing landscape that we will be practising in.”
Upper-year medical students Lunan Zhao and Neha Malhotra have first-hand knowledge of the importance of the medical humanities.
“As learners we see that the biomedical approach of treating diseases has limits in supporting the well-being of patients,” says Zhao. “An interdisciplinary lens drawing on critical theory from the humanities enables us, as clinical learners, to better appreciate the social determinants of health.”
Based on their proven track record and impact, Peterkin and his colleagues are taking an ambitious next step in the evolution of health humanities teaching and learning — seeking philanthropic support to establish Canada’s first endowed Chair in Health Humanities.
The chair’s mandate will focus on enhancing existing arts and humanities programming while developing new initiatives focused on clinical learners at every level and from all departments and divisions. As an endowed position, the chair will be maintained in perpetuity, securing the arts and humanities’ continuity and longevity in Temerty Medicine’s clinical educational offerings.
“The field is mature enough in Canada now for us to do this,” says Peterkin. “The standards of medical education have changed, and it is our obligation to create a healthier, more well-rounded experience for our trainees through the arts and humanities.”
To find out more about the Chair in Health Humanities and how you can support it, please contact Michelle Fong, Associate Director, Development in Temerty Medicine’s Office of Advancement at michelley.fong@utoronto.ca or by telephone at 416-529-8500.
Story by John Lorinc
The petite, elderly woman, her straight blonde hair cut in a pageboy, hangs her head over the armrest of her wheelchair as an aide sets the volume on an iPhone. She listens through the headphones and, with a slight gesture, moves one arm weakly as the music begins, but then allows it to fall back in her lap as she shakes her head, seemingly defeated. Her helper presses on, gently kissing the back of the woman’s other hand as a familiar refrain swells.
Suddenly, as the ups and downs of the dramatic finale of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake take shape, her arms move with all the grace and expression of the ballerina she once was. Her face is etched with the emotion of the music, and her upper body sways forward with practised movements.
Marta Cinta Gonzáles, who performed in Cuba and New York, was living with Alzheimer’s disease in a nursing home when a music therapy organization made a video of her and posted it on YouTube. Gonzáles died in March 2020. Later that year, the video went viral, prompting not just a search for Gonzáles’ background, but also a surge of public interest in the power of music to reach individuals living with the heavily stigmatized and often dehumanizing disease.
“Music memories seem to be better preserved in Alzheimer’s patients than non-musical memories,” says Michael Thaut, a University of Toronto music professor who is the director of the Music and Health Science Research Center at the Faculty of Music. Even for individuals who have lost much of their cognitive ability, music can trigger speech, movement, memory and expression.
Corinne Fischer (MD ’93, PGME ’94) is a Temerty Medicine associate professor of geriatric psychiatry who runs the St. Michael’s Hospital Memory Disorders Clinic. At the clinic, Fischer and Thaut are co-leading a pair of studies exploring if exposure to deeply familiar music — for example, from a person’s youth — can unlock autobiographical memories and improve cognition. “The vision was to see if we could establish what is it about music that’s so well preserved in the brains of patients with cognitive decline,” Fischer says.
Imaging shows that the parts of the brain that respond to music or movement tend to be less affected by dementia and Alzheimer’s physical manifestations, such as the buildup of amyloid deposits. But the findings of these and other research studies go well beyond neuroscience and the modes of therapy designed to mitigate some of the distress and agitation that individuals with Alzheimer’s and dementia experience.
Indeed, the fact that people living with these conditions have alternative ways to express themselves suggests a means of breaking down the crushing stigma associated with dementia. “People become isolated, and some people don’t even want to learn that they have this disease because there’s so much stigma around it,” observes Julia Gray, an assistant professor, teaching stream, of health humanities at University of Toronto Scarborough. For many years, Gray has used theatre to break down barriers and improve understanding.
Exposure to familiar music appears connected to improved cognition and memory. The use of long-familiar music is “absolutely key”
“The capacity of people living with dementia for meaningful engagement is sorely underestimated; the assumption is that dementia leads to an erasure of the person,” adds Pia Kontos (PhD ’03), a senior scientist at the KITE Research Institute and a professor at U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Her research focuses on stigma and how the arts can lead to more just, caring and inclusive policies and practices.
Last fall, Fischer, Thaut and colleagues reported on their work with a group of patients who spent several weeks listening to a daily playlist that included music they had heard recently as well as long-familiar songs. The group included musicians and non-musicians. The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
The results showed that exposure to familiar music appears connected to improved cognition and memory. The use of long-familiar music is “absolutely key,” says Thaut, noting that therapists who work with dementia patients now seek out these kinds of musical touchstones, often in collaboration with family members. “We can’t reverse the disease, but we think we can create brain-based cognitive boosts that increase function,” he says.
Listening to music, adds Fischer, is an easy, enjoyable activity that seems to spark cognitive stimulation.
The evolutionary reason for why music, in particular, has this effect is still something of a mystery. However, evidence of human attraction to music reaches back many of thousands of years, to archeologists unearthing flutes with precisely spaced holes, says Thaut. But he adds, “The auditory brain is [still] much less understood than the visual brain.”
Apart from the neurology involved, Kontos argues that research on dementia and creative endeavours, such as dance and music, challenges assumptions that dementia entails only loss and incapacity.
Gray, a former theatre director, is the lead creator of Cracked, a play about dementia for individuals with the condition, their family and caregivers. The shared, intimate experience of the play and the discussion that follows allow conversations not just about the stigma, but the ways in which cultural activities provide new forms of expression.
“In a way,” she says, “dementia challenges us because culturally, we’re so caught up in the Enlightenment era, in thinking that personhood is about thinking, whereas personhood is about so many different ways of being in the world. The arts really do help us live full lives.”
These findings also raise philosophical questions about the very seat of the self. Based on her research on people living with dementia, Kontos says that certain ways of knowing are clearly encoded in the body, not the brain. The fact that dementia may disable or destroy some higher-order functions, such as speech and autobiographical memory, doesn’t mean it has fully made off with other core elements of an individual’s humanity.
“My research challenges the assumption that there’s existential loss,” she says. “There is creativity, relationships, humour, the development of new skills. There is so much more to living with dementia than just neuropathology.”
Our Temerty Medicine alumni network consists of more than 63,000 graduates of our life sciences, rehabilitation sciences, MD and MD/PhD programs, as well as former residents and clinical fellows. Each year, the Dean’s Alumni Awards celebrate and highlight alumni who have made extraordinary contributions to the advancement of health and health care. Congratulations to this year’s honourees!
Dr. Herbert Dele Davies
(MD ’85)
Lifetime Achievement
International Impact Award
Bonnie Kirsh
(BScOT ’77, MEd OISE ’83, PhD OISE ’99)
Lifetime Achievement
National Impact Award
Dr. Meb Rashid
(MD ’92)
Humanitarian Award
Dr. Monica Farcas
(MD ’10, PGME ’15)
Emerging Leader Award
Visit temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/alumni to learn more about the Dean’s Alumni Award recipients and other alumni programs.
Photo by Graham Bezant
This photo from inside the Toronto Art Therapy Institute appeared in the Toronto Star in 1972.
The Toronto Art Therapy Institute (TATI) opened its doors in 1968, bridging the worlds of psychotherapy and art through training for Canada’s early art therapists.
Today, graduates of the institute work with children, adults and seniors across community and clinical settings. They use visual art-making to facilitate self-reflection and emotional expression and support mental health.
Art therapy has been shown to produce many benefits for participants, including renewed energy and reduced anxiety, and is a way to heal from trauma.
When we asked Temerty Faculty of Medicine Dean Trevor Young to contribute to UofTMed’s arts-themed issue, a modern mixed tape was a natural choice. The psychiatry professor and avid music fan has curated an “eclectic group of after-work favourites” for winding down with a playlist featuring selections from Young’s favourite genres. Listen for francophone pop from Montreal’s Eli Rose, Bluenote heavyweight John Coltrane, 70s-era Lou Reed and a little baroque Italian opera. Find the playlist on Spotify.