POV: Art Used as Tool In Fighting Substance Abuse on Maryland Campus

By Patricia Santora and Margaret Dowell

“Letting Go”  is a large scale oil painting by Margaret Dowell, Carroll Community College adjunct professor of art. The piece was created as a visualization work for a friend addicted to drugs.

One of the biggest challenges colleges and universities face is alcohol and other drug abuse by students. The scope of this challenge was best summarized in a recent report published by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Their report, “Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America’s Colleges and Universities,” reveals an alarming public health crisis at colleges across the country. The report said:

• About half of all full-time college students binge drink, abuse illegal drugs and/or prescription drugs every month;
• Almost one in four of these college students met the medical criteria for substance abuse or dependence (three times the rate found in the general population); and
• Rates of smoking increased
  from 25 to 31 percent of students from 1993 to 1999.

Alcohol and other drug abuse are linked to poor student academic performance. But campus alcohol and drug abuse is a reflection of a larger national public health crisis resulting from untreated substance abuse and addiction. Abusing alcohol, tobacco and other drugs leads to depression, anxiety and suicide, as well as a wide assortment of other medical conditions ranging from heart disease to cancer and stroke.

Carroll Community College in Westminster, Md., wanted to address this public health challenge, and we surveyed what other colleges were doing. We saw that over the past year, college presidents from about 125 leading U.S. universities called on lawmakers to consider lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 years, saying that the current law did not work and created a “culture of dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking” on college campuses. It was unclear to us how lowering the legal drinking age would alleviate this public health crisis on college campuses.

At Carroll, we chose a different approach. By acknowledging alcohol and drug abuse as a public health crisis, we decided we could best serve our students, faculty and staff, and members of our neighboring community through an education and prevention program.

To accomplish this, we collaborated with addiction scientists at the
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who directed the National Program Office of Innovators Combating Substance Abuse. Their primary goal is to drive innovation in addiction control using strategic initiatives to prevent and reduce substance abuse. The Innovators Program, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, developed several science-based initiatives (e.g., substance abuse lectures, conferences, “think tanks,” academic publications) on addiction treatment, prevention and policy issues.

They also developed a unique addiction art component to their program, advocating the concept that creativity and artistic expression can play a significant role in raising awareness not only of the personal toll caused by substance abuse, but also of the new life born in recovery. Innovators developed their pioneering addiction art program because of its pivotal role in the education and prevention of substance abuse. Art was instrumental in changing the way individuals understood substance abuse and addiction from being seen as a “moral failing” or unlawful act to being accepted as a chronic medical illness requiring treatment, similar to the way other chronic illnesses such as diabetes
or asthma are treated. Understanding addiction as a treatable medical illness is critical in preventing and controlling this prevalent public health problem.

With this perspective guiding our approach, Carroll partnered with the Innovators Program and adapted their addiction art model to meet the needs of our students, faculty, staff and community. Carroll sponsored a major addiction art event that involved several of our departments over a six-week period in fall 2008.

The director of Carroll’s art gallery organized the event with support of the director of our art department and several other enthusiastic faculty members. Carroll’s addiction art event featured three addiction art exhibitions — with art created by professionals, college and high school students — lectures on addiction prevention and treatment, an addiction film forum, and published resources on alcohol/drug prevention and treatment for our students and visiting guests. Some of
our faculty also exhibited their own art, which they created specifically in response to Carroll’s “Call to Artists”
for the addiction art exhibitions.

The response to Carroll’s addiction art events resulted in a tremendous groundswell of interest from our students and the community. The college experienced unprecedented crowds, constant media interest (with six front-page articles published in the local newspapers) and diverse community groups (high schools, substance abuse support groups, juvenile justice system) visiting our campus on a daily basis to see the addiction art exhibitions and other events during the six-week period.

In evaluating Carroll’s efforts to meet the public health challenge of escalating substance abuse, we concluded that our approach successfully targeted an unmet educational need among our students, faculty and the community at large. Furthermore, Carroll banned smoking throughout its entire campus in January 2009, a mandate that further strengthened our campus policies on alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse.

Based on the successful outcome of Carroll’s experience, we invite other community colleges to join us as we continue to explore strategies to educate and prevent substance abuse on our campuses and within our communities. We encourage colleges to adapt the addiction art model we used to meet the educational needs of your campus.
A definitive booklet, Guidelines for Organizing Art Exhibitions on Addiction and Recovery to Prevent Substance Abuse, describes the addiction art model used at Carroll. The Guidelines are available through the Innovators Program and can be obtained by visiting their website (www.innovatorsawards.org).

-- Patricia Santora
assistant professor of psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine

-- Margaret Dowell
adjunct professor of art, Carroll  Community College

Contributing to this article were:
Carroll Community College President Faye Pappalardo; Scott Gore, chair of the college’s Fine and Performing Arts Department; and Maggie Ball, discipline coordinator of the college’s Visual Arts Department.

Comments: editor@ccweek.com

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© 2010 Community College Week (ISSN 1041-5726)
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