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Stressed? Sick? Swiss town lets doctors prescribe free museum visits as art therapy for patients

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Stressed? Sick? Swiss town lets doctors prescribe free museum visits as art therapy for patients
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Stressed? Sick? Swiss town lets doctors prescribe free museum visits as art therapy for patients

2025-03-23 13:30 Last Updated At:13:51

NEUCHATEL, Switzerland (AP) — The world’s woes got you down? Feeling burnout at work? Need a little something extra to fight illness or prep for surgery? The Swiss town of Neuchâtel is offering its residents a novel medical option: Expose yourself to art and get a doctor’s note to do it for free.

Under a new two-year pilot project, local and regional authorities are covering the costs of “museum prescriptions” issued by doctors who believe their patients could benefit from visits to any of the town’s four museums as part of their treatment.

The project is based on a 2019 World Health Organization report that found the arts can boost mental health, reduce the impact of trauma and lower the risk of cognitive decline, frailty and “premature mortality,” among other upsides.

Art can help relax the mind — as a sort of preventative medicine — and visits to museums require getting up and out of the house with physical activity like walking and standing for long periods.

Neuchatel council member Julie Courcier Delafontaine said the COVID crisis also played a role in the program's genesis. “With the closure of cultural sites (during coronavirus lockdowns), people realized just how much we need them to feel better.”

She said so far some 500 prescriptions have been distributed to doctors around town and the program costs “very little." Ten thousand Swiss francs (about $11,300) have been budgeted for it.

If successful, local officials could expand the program to other artistic activities like theater or dance, Courcier Delafontaine said. The Swiss national health care system doesn’t cover “culture as a means of therapy,” but she hopes it might one day, if the results are positive enough.

Marianne de Reynier Nevsky, the cultural mediation manager in the town of 46,000 who helped devise the program, said it built on a similar idea rolled out at the Fine Arts Museum in Montreal, Canada, in 2019.

She said many types of patients could benefit.

“It could be a person with depression, a person who has trouble walking, a person with a chronic illness,” she said near a display of a feather headdress from Papua New Guinea at the Ethnographic Museum of Neuchatel, a converted former villa that overlooks Late Neuchatel.

Part of the idea is to get recalcitrant patients out of the house and walking more.

Dr. Marc-Olivier Sauvain, head of surgery at the Neuchatel Hospital Network, said he had already prescribed museum visits to two patients to help them get in better shape before a planned operation.

He said a wider rollout is planned once a control group is set up. For his practice, the focus will be on patients who admit that they’ve lost the habit of going out. He wants them to get moving.

“It’s wishful thinking to think that telling them to go walk or go for a stroll to improve their fitness level before surgery” will work, Sauvain said on a video call Saturday, wearing blue scrubs. “I think that these patients will fully benefit from museum prescriptions. We’ll give them a chance to get physical and intellectual exercise.”

“And as a doctor, it’s really nice to prescribe museum visits rather than medicines or tests that patients don’t enjoy,” he added. “To tell them ’It’s a medical order that instructs you to go visit one of our nice city museums.'”

Some museum-goers see the upsides too.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Carla Fragniere Filliger, a poet and retired teacher, during a visit to the ethnography museum. “There should be prescriptions for all the museums in the world!”

Marianne de Reynier Nevsky, the cultural mediation manager in Neuchatel, left, and town council member Julie Courcier Delafontaine chat about a new "museum prescription" program outside the Ethnographic Museum of Neuchatel in Neuchatel, Switzerland, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jamey Keaton)

Marianne de Reynier Nevsky, the cultural mediation manager in Neuchatel, left, and town council member Julie Courcier Delafontaine chat about a new "museum prescription" program outside the Ethnographic Museum of Neuchatel in Neuchatel, Switzerland, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jamey Keaton)

President Vladimir Putin visited Russia's Kursk region for the first time since Moscow said that it drove out Ukrainian forces from the area last month, the Kremlin said Wednesday.

Putin visited the region bordering Ukraine the previous day, according to the Kremlin.

Ukrainian forces made a surprise incursion into Kursk in August 2024 in one of its biggest battlefield successes in the more than three-year war. The incursion was the first time Russian territory was occupied by an invader since World War II and dealt a humiliating blow to the Kremlin.

Since the end of 2023, Russia has mostly had the advantage on the battlefield, with the exception of Kursk.

Ukraine, the U.S. and South Korea said that North Korea sent up to 12,000 troops to help the Russian army take back control of Kursk, and Russia said on April 26 that its forces had pushed out the Ukrainian army. Kyiv officials denied the claim.

Putin visited Kursk Nuclear Power Plant-2, which is still under construction, and spoke at a closed meeting with selected volunteers. He also told acting Gov. Alexander Khinshtein that the Kremlin supported the idea of continuing monthly payments to displaced families that still couldn't return to their homes.

Disgruntled residents had previously shown their disapproval over a lack of compensation in rare organized protests.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that its air defenses shot down 159 Ukrainian drones across the country overnight, including 53 over the Oryol region and 51 over the Bryansk region.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

In this photo released by the Russian Presidential Press Service on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2nd left, attends a meeting with volunteers at Kursk region, Russia. (Russian Presidential Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by the Russian Presidential Press Service on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2nd left, attends a meeting with volunteers at Kursk region, Russia. (Russian Presidential Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by the Russian Presidential Press Service on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, speaks with volunteers at Kursk region, Russia. (Russian Presidential Press Service via AP)

In this photo released by the Russian Presidential Press Service on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, speaks with volunteers at Kursk region, Russia. (Russian Presidential Press Service via AP)

In this photo taken from video distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Russian servicemen attend a combat training for assault units in an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

In this photo taken from video distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Russian servicemen attend a combat training for assault units in an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

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