The Councilor for Health, Alba Vergès, and the Councilor for Culture, Laura Borràs, today presented the collaboration agreement between Vall d'Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus and the National Art Museum of Catalonia to carry out various actions aimed at to explore the potential of art as a tool for patients and family members for its therapeutic and emotional benefits. Both institutions have been working together for more than a year to disseminate the cultural heritage, to make the stay in Vall d'Hebron more humane and enjoyable and to ensure that hospital users achieve therapeutic benefits through the values and wellbeing that art can contribute.The Minister of Health, Alba Vergés, stressed that this is a project that "enthuses" the two departments and has been convinced that culture can bring great potential and benefits for patients. "With art, you can achieve better health and well-being," remarked Vergés, who also added that this program between Vall d'Hebron and the MNAC incorporates the gender perspective, which is one of the priorities of the Ministry of Health in this mandate.She also stressed that the project is part of a broader program of collaboration between Health and Culture and has pointed out, for example, that "to date we have already incorporated all the museums of Catalonia in the Health Assets Map of the Agency of Public Health of Catalonia." The map of health assets is the collection of a whole series of community resources and activities that give health and well-being to people.Counselor Borràs remarked that "we are very satisfied with this project because it confirms that culture has a very important social dimension, it helps to unite, integrate and even cure or help cure. We are very convinced of this social value of culture. The National Museum has worked intensively on projects such as this, which attempt to break the physical boundaries of museums and help culture to become the pharmacy of the soul, at certain times. transversality of culture." This initiative is a pioneer and is part of a transversal program recently approved by the Institut Català de la Salut that seeks to advance in the use of the therapeutic value of the different artistic and cultural disciplines. In this line, it values museums and cultural institutions as health assets, that is, as agents with the potential to be beneficial for the health of citizens. The joint creation of actions that combine perspectives and methodologies of the arts with health practice can lead to new therapeutic options available to health professionals.As for the National Museum, the project is part of its strategy and the work it develops to guide visitors, transforming the equipment into an inclusive space to reach broader sectors of society. The museum works to break barriers - social, economic, knowledge, etc. - and reinforce its social dimension becoming a space for all the minorities that make up the social reality. An example in the same line of the project with Vall d'Hebron is the collaborative work that he has developed with a highly complex school.The director of the National Museum, Pepe Serra, explained that "the museum is a public service that is oriented to the visitor, we are concerned about giving access to collectives and minorities that do not have it and we work to increase our social dimension. It is a matter of working as connectors between people and being a meeting point for the whole society."For his part, the manager of Vall d'Hebron, Dr. Vicenç Martínez Ibáñez, says that, as the largest hospital in Catalonia, "our vocation is of public service, we are a social entity and we have to open the doors in our neighborhoods We are very happy to be able to give health and that citizens enjoy the benefits of art and music."This collaboration agreement will begin with a project aimed at studying new art therapies in health in the field of psychology. The initiative will start with women who have a post-traumatic stress disorder, of diverse cultural origin (immigrants or refugees) and who suffer situations of social vulnerability. The psychological treatment will combine new didactic strategies of the National Museum and the principles of therapeutic intervention for the emotional support to situations of fragility of women established by the team of Dr. Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga, Head of the Psychiatric Service of the Vall d'Hebron and principal investigator of the group of Psychiatry, Mental Health and Addictions of the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Research (VHIR).The patients will receive a psychological treatment divided into two groups: one of them will perform it completely in the hospital and the other will be transferred to the MNAC to check if the fact of being treated in a non-sanitary environment, such as a museum, and applying to the treatment sessions the advantages of art, it gives them more satisfaction and improves their quality of life, as well as decreases the symptoms derived from post-traumatic stress.The objective of this project is "to obtain more scientific evidence of the benefits of art in health and that can be offered publicly to the people we serve in the future," explains Dr. Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga. Vall d'Hebron will carry out a comparative study of the group psychological therapy that has been developed in the hospital environment and in the museum to detect the differences that the variable of space and art has caused. The goal is to reach practical conclusions that are incorporated into new treatments once validated empirically.The aim is that the sessions around the MNAC, with multidisciplinary strategies, favor the clinical evolution of the patients and make the relationship with the people around them more fluid. Depending on the results, the experience can be extended to other groups, such as patients with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or autism. According to Dr. Josep Antoni Ramos Quiroga, it is a pioneering initiative, insofar as it had never been carried out with this group of women with post-traumatic stress. The application of art in health has already given promising results with patients with depression or Alzheimer's."We understand the museum as a therapeutic, community and integrating space", highlights Dr. Josep Antoni Ramos Quiroga, who adds that work is being done so that the initiative has continuity beyond this specific therapy. In this sense, the agreement between Vall d'Hebron and MNAC sets the foundations for future activities so that the museum is perceived as a space of tranquility and seclusion. The two institutions will work together in the dissemination of heritage and other matters of common interest related to the scientific, social, artistic, cultural and health fields. Give resources to face the future with security and confidenceGroup therapies on traumatic experiences and their emotional repercussions make it easier to give meaning to what triggered the symptoms and to develop management skills and motivation to live fully and plan for the future with security and confidence.The joint project of Vall de Hebron and the National Museum is based in particular on the STAIR Therapy model, according to which, in order to recover from trauma, emotional regulation is as important as working interpersonally and incorporating resources that improve one's perception. same and socialization, especially in the aspect of receiving and giving support. Art applied to this context within a space such as the National Museum can be beneficial to the extent that it can help patients with symptoms of post-traumatic stress to verbalize memories of past experiences with paintings and sculptures as support, reactivate positive emotions and self-esteem, reduce anxiety and introduce a playful element in the relationship between them throughout group therapy. More risk of post-trauma symptomatology in immigrant or refugee populationWhen selecting refugees and immigrants for this first study as a result of the collaboration agreement between the National Museum and Vall d'Hebron, it has been taken into account that they present post-trauma symptomatology in percentages higher than those of the native population, due in large part to the life experiences. Also, these women often find it more difficult to access care resources, which may mean that they do not always receive the necessary treatment for their resolution.