Summer 2025: Member Open Submissions

Lee Nah

Expanding the Toolbox: Arts Participation for Intimate Partner Violence

As we emerge from the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, a second crisis has become painfully clear: a nationwide epidemic of loneliness. In 2023, the Surgeon General warned that the lack of social connection carries health risks as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). For survivors of IPV, this loneliness can be even more profound, layered with trauma, stigma, and fear. When we talk about intimate partner violence (IPV), we often picture it as a private phenomenon—something that happens behind closed doors. However, the ripple effects of IPV extend beyond individual survivors, influencing family and community dynamics, thereby making IPV not only a personal crisis but a societal challenge as well (Periyasamy et al., 2024). Every year in the United States, an estimated 5.3 million incidents of intimate partner violence (IPV) occur among adult women annually (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2024). Additionally, minority women experience disproportionately high rates of IPV, yet face systemic barriers to care, making community-based interventions particularly valuable. So, how can we further expand our understanding of IPV as something that occurs beyond just the relational level, and find solutions that seek to address the complex communal aspects of IPV to support survivors on multiple dimensions?

A new, emerging field of study in psychology and public health proposes one solution: arts participation. Yes, art—whether it’s painting, writing, dance, music, or theater—can play a powerful role in healing, rebuilding self-worth, and fostering social support among survivors. By helping survivors reconnect with themselves and each other, empirically supported, group-led creative arts programs are reshaping what recovery can look like—and even pushing forward broader goals of trauma-informed and culturally responsive models of holistic support.

Survivors of IPV often struggle with depression, PTSD, anxiety, and substance abuse. Social trust breaks down, and communities weaken with its occurrence. Researchers have used a socio-ecological model to understand this complexity: violence stems from a tangle of individual, relational, community, and societal factors, like gender norms, economic hardship, and systemic racism. To truly support survivors, we have to address every level of this web, not just at the individual level. Traditional interventions have often fallen short, focusing mainly on crisis management—getting someone out of a dangerous situation and providing therapy afterward. But these approaches can sometimes overlook cultural stigma, institutional mistrust, or survivors’ fears of being retraumatized in formal settings.

Arts-based interventions offer something different—and, crucially, they work across multiple layers of the socio-ecological model. A growing body of research shows that creative arts therapies help survivors externalize painful emotions, rebuild a sense of agency, and reconnect with others. Most recently, the study of evidence-based, arts participation interventions has gained attention for its success in supporting traumainformed interventions (Boydell, et al., 2012). Through group-delivered, arts participation in structured, trauma-informed environments, survivors create visual metaphors of their experiences, share their stories through painting or drama, and collaborate on collective projects. In doing so, they rediscover a sense of control and voice. Studies have found that these interventions reduce PTSD symptoms and build emotional resilience, significantly reducing PTSD symptom scores and negative psychological symptoms, presenting the opportunity to support survivors of IPV (Morison, Simonds, & Stewart, 2021). They also help combat one of the most devastating effects of IPV: isolation. Even short-term group arts programs have been shown to create a lasting peer support network, fostering a sense of community, integrating an intersectional approach to how IPV interventions can be designed (Lynch & McGill, 2019). For survivors from marginalized communities, who face added barriers to accessing mental health services, arts participation offers a way to find healing through communal strength and cultural expression.

As an emerging discipline, this field isn't without its challenges. The research so far is promising, but still evolving. Studies vary widely in size, methods, and the types of art used, which makes it hard to compare outcomes or draw sweeping conclusions. And most focus on short-term emotional improvements rather than long-term societal reintegration. But instead of dismissing arts interventions because they're “hard to measure,” we should invest in better ways to study them. Researchers need standardized evaluation frameworks that mix both numbers and stories: capturing not just symptom reduction, but survivors’ lived experiences of empowerment, connection, and growth.

The call to action is to integrate arts participation into mainstream trauma recovery efforts, just like counseling or medical care at the public health level. Ways to leverage this integration may be to fund community arts programs with a trauma-informed focus, as well as leveraging the arts workforce to train artists to work in clinical and social service settings, and creating credentialing pathways to recognize their expertise (Sonke et al., 2024). As practitioners and advocates, we can push for partnerships between arts organizations, healthcare providers, and IPV support services (Springs & Baruch, 2021). This is to influence policy changes that will formally recognize the arts as part of public health strategies, as many across the world, including in the UK, have achieved.

Critics might argue that art can't replace therapy, and they’re right. It's not about replacing anything, but rather, it's about expanding the toolbox. When IPV survivors are given more ways to heal, express themselves, and connect with others, the entire community grows stronger. Leveraging social cohesion as a means of addressing IPV can ensure that healing doesn’t just mean surviving, but thriving, in connection.

Lee Nah is an artist, community-engaged scholar, and Chicagoan majoring in psychology, gender and sexuality studies, and studio art at Kenyon College. She is committed to studying how the arts fosters cultural connections and holistic well-being in communities of color through public health.