Cinematherapy: Can Watching Movies Improve Your Mental Health?

This article supports and adds to the ideas promoted in the article, Music is Often Better than Prozac, published on October 16, 2006.

In an age where pill popping has become the method of choice for mood lifting, it was refreshing to read an alternative view on dealing with feelings of depression. The article, cited above, discussed the mental health benefits music. Research in the area of expressive arts therapy is just beginning to show evidence that music and other forms of the expressive arts, can be very powerful ways to heal and improve your mental well-being.

Prozac and other medications may be necessary for clinically significant problems, but there are many people who suffer from lower levels of depression or anxiety, who may not benefit from using medication. Alternative types of therapies can often provide self-help tools that actually help to manage everyday life better than relying on medication. Even those who do require medication can benefit from expressive arts techniques.

The Healing Power of Cinematherapy

Cinematherapy is the practice of watching movies to improve mental health. Though, motion pictures have been around for several decades, it is only recently that the mental health benefits of movie-watching have begun to show promise. Movies often have the uncanny ability to temporarily deliver our minds to a place where we can express a wide range of emotions in a way that connects us with the main characters or movie theme without the concreteness of our own life dilemmas.

Many times, movies have the power to make us laugh or cry, drawing on our inner emotions and providing a safe release of feelings that have been unexpressed or pent up. How many times has your doctor recommended that you have a good laugh and call back in the morning? Aside from Patch Adams, I doubt that many would prescribe a few videos from Blockbuster and a night with the DVD player with a bucket of microwave popcorn. Yet, everyone can probably recall a certain movie that made them feel better or a movie that really made them think, or cry, or laugh until their own problems seemed lighter.