The expressive arts and resilience in aging

ABSTRACT

While aging brings strengths older adults often face challenges of functional limitations and loss which require resilience. While there is evidence which indicates that engaging in the expressive arts may promote characteristics of resilience, there is a dearth of attention paid to formulating conceptual models to understand this process. Thus, this paper attempts to more fully understand the relationship of elements of engagement in the expressive arts to resilience in aging. It does this by using psychology to conceptually expanding Klein’s (2018) description of stages of the perceptual process involved in artistic engagement and relating these stages to characteristics of resilience in aging as described by Abbema et al. (2015). Also, the paper presents practical applications and directions for future research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.