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!”

USC star JuJu Watkins sustains season-ending knee injury against Mississippi State in March Madness

2025-03-25 13:46 Last Updated At：13:50

LOS ANGELES (AP) — JuJu Watkins sustained a season-ending right knee injury in the first quarter of top-seeded Southern California's win against Mississippi State in the NCAA Tournament on Monday night.

The stellar sophomore will undergo surgery and then begin rehabilitation, a team spokesperson said.

Watkins, one of the biggest stars in women's basketball, was streaking to the basket chased by two defenders when her knee bent awkwardly as she planted her right leg, the non-contact injury causing her to crumple to the floor. She grabbed her knee and writhed in pain as her teammates surrounded her.

“I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t rattled seeing JuJu lying on the floor and crying,” coach Lindsay Gottlieb said.

The crowd in Galen Center went silent as Gottlieb and two other USC staffers attended to the 19-year-old Watkins, a 6-foot-2 sophomore who averages 24.6 points. She was carried off by multiple people with the Trojans leading 13-2.

The Trojans won 96-59 to reach the Sweet 16.

“My prayers and thoughts are with JuJu,” MSU coach Sam Purcell said. “Obviously, we're competitors and you never want to see that, especially what she means for women's basketball.”

Watkins has enjoyed good health in her brief college career. She started all 34 of USC’s games as a freshman, when she was second in scoring nationally with 27.1 points a game. Her 920 points set a national record for freshman scoring.

USC reached the Elite Eight last year, losing to Paige Bueckers and UConn. The teams could meet again in a regional final in Spokane, Washington, this year.

After Watkins was hurt, the crowd loudly booed Mississippi State every time it had the ball. The school's cheerleaders were booed during their halftime routine and the crowd got on the team again as it warmed up for the second half.

“They’re gonna stand behind their home team. They’re gonna go hard for JuJu,” said MSU guard Jerkaila Jordan, who scored 17 points. “I couldn’t do nothing but respect them.”

Watkins had three free throws, one rebound and two assists in five minutes.

In the second quarter, USC guard Malia Samuels went down hard on the baseline. She held her head in her hands as the crowd booed and Gottlieb again came rushing out to check on the sophomore, who ran the offense in Watkins' absence.

“I was relieved to hear her say, ‘I’m good,'” Gottlieb said.

The Trojans appeared undaunted by the injury to their star. They rushed the floor in celebration after senior Rayah Marshall banked in a 3-pointer to beat the halftime buzzer and extend the lead to 50-27.

“They gave us a lot of energy, especially when things weren’t going our way at the beginning,” said Kiki Iriafen, who scored a season-high 36 points.

Watkins hurt her left hand after the ball jammed her fingers in USC's first-round blowout win over UNC Greensboro. She later came up limping on her left leg and winced.

“It’s the end of the season, body is a little banged up,” she said afterward. “On to the next. Nobody cares. I’m all good.”

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