Art Therapy and Wellness Programs for Vets through Museums

Art therapy with military active duty and veterans has been an important part of their healing throughout MTFs, VAs, and even in the community. One such program is Art for Vets that is offered through an art museum in New Hampshire. Interestingly, one of my former supervisees, Jackie, was interviewed for this article as she talks about how art is an important part of healing for service members and veterans from trauma, moral injury, and other issues that stem from military service.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/11/29/museums-therapeutic-art-programme-helps-military-veterans-find-their-voices

Museum’s therapeutic art programme helps military veterans find their voices

Art for Vets initiative at Currier Museum of Art in the US encourages personal expression under the care of a full-time art therapist

Kimberly Hatfield

29 November 2024

The Currier Museum of Art consulted veterans for its 2013 exhibition Visual Dispatches from the Vietnam War, where they also acted as tour guides. This project was a catalyst for the ongoing Art for Vets programme

Photo: courtesy Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire

“If I feel depressed and I need to redirect, acrylics are going to be good because it’s longer term—acrylic is a paint you can go to and do some work on to self-regulate,” says the retired army special operations major David Potter, a 28-year veteran who served missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa. Repeated blast exposures caused brain injuries in combat for which he received the Purple Heart, but which also devastated many aspects of his life. His road to recovery has included both traditional and alternative therapies to heal his body and mind.

Potter has been participating in the art and wellness experiences through the Art for Vets programme at the Currier Museum of Art since his full-time move to Manchester, New Hampshire, in 2020. He has found great satisfaction in creating his own colour palette, watching the canvas absorb his paints and developing the skills of an artist. Beyond these hands-on skills, he says the programme helps veterans better understand their own emotions, learn new ways to self-regulate and engage in a hobby that helps redirect them if they are struggling.

Potter is not alone. A recent study found that one in five veterans from the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from serious depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is estimated that one in four in the US military face mental health challenges. And more than 485,000 service members were diagnosed with traumatic brain injury between 2000 and 2023.

“There’s a lot of challenges and a lot of isolation,” says Lucie Amaro Chmura, the Currier’s art therapist. While not all veterans struggle with mental health issues, many find re-entry challenging. She says that the military community has a shared experience that civilians cannot comprehend. “Part of the way I developed the programme is really to support more connection with the community, within the veteran community but also to support integration within the non-veteran community,” she says.

The Currier is one of very few museums to offer veterans and active military members a suite of free programming under the care of a full-time art therapist. While the museum is cautious to label them as wellness—not therapy—programmes, its monthly family days, seasonal workshops, virtual sessions and weekly in-gallery and in-studio art experiences continually provide a place for veterans to feel seen and valued.

The art is not incidental. The hands-on classes range from expressive creations using collage and objects found in nature to mixed-media memoir. They often work off a theme, but Amaro Chmura emphasises that the goal is less about output and more about the chance to self-reflect, build skills and share.

Jacqueline Jones, a board-certified art therapist and founder of Flourish Momentum, developed clinical art therapy services for military members suffering from traumatic brain injuries and psychological distress at the Intrepid Spirit Center at Fort Belvoir in Virginia and the Invisible Wounds Center at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

Jones explains that art is an important tool in healing from invisible wounds. Trauma can disrupt areas of the brain that process words, leaving the sufferer unequipped to verbalise their challenges and manage overwhelming feelings.

“But what you resist persists, and what is genuinely seen and met and heard naturally transmutes and shifts,” Jones says. Art therapy allows the essence of what needs to be addressed to come out. “It provides a pathway to resolve what is underlying the conditions someone is seeking to improve. I have had clients refer to art therapy as the ‘scalpel to the soul’. It provides a direct route to what is the underlying issue. Long term, it helps them create a shift deep down that helps them resolve the grief or trauma or moral injury.”

Vietnam veterans forged the path

Art for Vets was founded more than a decade ago after an incredible misstep, says Kurt Sundstrom, the Currier’s senior curator of collections.

Around 2012, Sundstrom planned a Vietnam war photography exhibition to explore the lasting power of images such as Eddie Adams’s prisoner execution and Nick Ut’s napalm girl. He reached out to members of New Hampshire’s veteran community—proportionally larger than in most states, at 7.7% of the overall population—for input. The meeting did not go well.

“They were pissed,” Sundstrom says. The photographs in the show, iconic for their depictions of the senseless brutality of war, fuelled an anti-war, anti-veteran sentiment then, and reopened wounds for those veterans.

Sundstrom rebuilt trust and asked the group to take the lead on contextualising the show. Visual Dispatches from the Vietnam War ran for around three months in 2013, with Vietnam veterans serving as tour guides and then meeting regularly at the museum. The Currier, which prides itself on community engagement, recognised a population with an unmet need.

Today, around 270 individuals from all branches of the military are enrolled in the Art for Vets programme, with a retention rate of 98%. Through the monthly Vets Family Day, which includes free lunch and activities, an additional 600 veteran family members participate annually.

Potter, who also participates in the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association, says art is “a cool vehicle” that connects him with fellow service members while exploring other aspects of his identity. “It helps me to get a new skill to either regulate myself or to improve my self-esteem, and also to redefine myself as a civilian.”

• The Art for Vets programme at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire

What If Workplaces Used Brain Science to Provide an Optimal Workday?

 I have often discussed about how important it is to be able to work at our optimal level, especially working best with our chronotype (night owls usually get the short end of the stick) as well as with our personality traits and needs. There are four main chronotypes; some people work better early in the morning, but some are better in the afternoon or evening. I facilitate True Colors personality inventories, and each color type has different workplace needs, such as innovation and competency (Greens/NTs), creativity/expression, helpfulness, and harmony (Blues/NFs), independence and being hands-on (Oranges/SPs), or structure and organization (Golds/SJs).

This article echoes that. The helpfulness of a four-day work week for many people continues to be proven with research, but many workplaces (where it could be possible) will not consider it. Society favors the early morning start time, and with the advent of technology, people are expected to be available at all hours of the day. We need to find a way to work smarter, not harder, in our respective fields. I understand that some types of work are not conducive to creative maximization of their employees' peak productivity times and methods in every way, but I really hope that leaders and agencies can be more open in this regard. They will have happier employees and better outcomes in the long run, and our society will be the better for it.

What are your thoughts?

https://www.truity.com/blog/what-if-we-redesigned-workday-based-brain-science

What if We Redesigned the Workday Based on Brain Science?

By: Vlora Ramadani

posted 02.16.26 at 3:00 AM PST

If you designed the workday from scratch based on how the brain actually works, would it look anything like your calendar today?

For most people, the answer is no.

Many knowledge workers are living what feels like an "infinite workday" of back-to-back meetings, constant notifications, and an unspoken expectation to be reachable at all times. It's no surprise that so many people finish the day wired, tired, and unsure what they actually accomplished. 

At the same time, research on shorter workweeks and brain rhythms has exploded. Trials of four-day weeks suggest you can cut hours without tanking productivity, provided you redesign how time is used. Studies on attention and rest show that brains work best in waves, not in one long, flat block. And once you layer personality into the mix, it becomes obvious that there is no single “ideal” workday. There are human patterns we all share, and then there is the way each person's wiring shapes how they work best.

This article explores what those findings mean for a typical day at work. We hope it will help leaders use the latest brain and personality science to minimize burnout and increase sustainable productivity in their teams.

What Shorter Weeks Quietly Taught Us About the Workday

The four-day week is often framed as a perk, but the research tells a deeper story. In the UK's largest four-day week pilot, 61 companies and roughly 2,900 workers moved to about 32 hours a week with no loss of pay, on the condition that output stayed the same. Over six months, revenue stayed broadly stable, self-reported burnout and stress fell, sick days dropped, and more than 90% of companies chose to continue after the trial. You can see the full results in the report from Autonomy and from 4 Day Week Global.

Similar experiments in other countries, including multi-year public-sector trials in Iceland and pilots in places like Japan, have found that when hours are reduced thoughtfully, wellbeing improves and performance usually holds steady or even increases.

When you look closer, these companies didn't just chop a day off the week and hope for the best. They became ruthless about meetings, more intentional about focus time, and clearer about priorities. Time changed, but so did the design of the day.

That same logic can be applied even if your organization is not ready for a four-day week. You may not be able to change the number of days, but you can still change the rhythm of a single day.

Your Brain Needs a Break

Most calendars are built around neat one-hour blocks, but your brain runs on a different rhythm.

Throughout the day, your mind cycles through roughly 90-minute waves of higher and lower alertness. During the peak of a wave, it's easier to focus and resist distractions. After that, attention naturally dips and needs a short period of recovery before it can return to the same level.

A 2022 meta-analysis found that taking short “microbreaks” during the workday can boost vigor and reduce fatigue without harming performance, especially when they involve light movement or mental detachment from work tasks. In other words, pushing through without pauses isn't a sign of dedication — it's a recipe for fogginess and mistakes.

Brain imaging backs this up. Microsoft's Human Factors Lab used EEG caps to measure brain activity in people sitting in back-to-back virtual meetings. When there were no breaks, stress-related beta waves climbed steadily over time. When the researchers added short breaks between calls, stress markers dropped and participants went into the next meeting more focused and calm. 

If we took this seriously, we wouldn't design days as a wall of meetings from 9 to 5. We would build:

• One to three deep-focus waves of roughly 90 minutes each.
• Short, genuine breaks between waves.
• Lighter, less demanding tasks in the lower-energy stretches.

That's the brain science. The next layer is: what kind of work are you doing, and who is doing it?

Knowledge, Emotional and Physical Work Need Different Days

Even before we talk about personality, the “ideal” day depends on the kind of work someone does.

For people in knowledge work, the main strain is cognitive. The brain burns energy making decisions, solving problems, and constantly switching between tasks. A brain-friendly day here means large uninterrupted blocks for deep work, fewer unnecessary meetings, and grouping similar tasks together so the brain isn't forced to change gear every few minutes.

For those doing a lot of emotional labor — teachers, HR professionals, therapists, support roles, managers on the front line — the load is relational. They're holding space for other people's emotions all day. A recent systematic review on remote work and health found that remote and hybrid roles can increase stress, fatigue and emotional exhaustion when boundaries are blurred and recovery time is scarce, especially in people-facing jobs. An ideal day for these workers includes decompression time between intense interactions, clearer limits on after-hours contact, and routines that help them come back to themselves after being “on” for others.

For physically demanding work, fatigue shows up in muscles and joints as much as in attention. Various research suggests that adding short movement breaks can reduce discomfort and improve functioning over time. An early example is a study of meatpacking workers that introduced active microbreaks and found reduced musculoskeletal discomfort across several body regions. Here, an ideal day includes rotating tasks, pacing exertion, and building in recovery as a safety measure, not just a nice extra.

So we already have three different “ideal days” emerging: one for cognitive load, one for emotional load, and one for physical load. But within each of those, personality still changes what works best.

Same Job, Different Brains: Where Personality Comes In

Two people can share the same job title and still have very different needs for a healthy, productive day. Personality is one reason why. Truity's frameworks — the TypeFinder® test based on Myers and Briggs, the Big Five, DISC personality assessment, the Enneagram — give teams a language for those differences.

For example, in the 16-type system, Judging (J) types often feel their best when the day is structured and decisions are made early, while Perceiving types tend to thrive with more flexibility and room to respond to what emerges. This article on chronoworking explores how aligning work with your natural energy cycles can improve focus and prevent burnout, and notes that flexible, self-directed schedules often appeal more to Perceiving types.

Introversion and Extraversion change the picture again. Introverts usually recharge in quiet and may need more time between meetings and other busywork to regroup. Extraverts gain energy from interaction and can feel flat if they have too many hours of solo work. This means that meetings drain different personality types in different ways, and small changes to timing, structure and recovery can make a big difference. 

In my own experience leading a large remote team, one simple change made a big difference. I started blocking at least one no-meeting day each week. That protected day allowed me to sink into deep work in my own rhythm instead of spending the entire day in reactive mode. On other days, I created specific focus blocks and told my team, “I will respond to messages within 60 minutes.” That small act of transparency made it easier for everyone to respect focus time without feeling ignored and it gave them permission to set similar boundaries for themselves. It was a practical way to translate brain science and personality needs into everyday behavior.

Where Leaders Can Start

Seen through this lens, there is no one ideal day. There are shared human needs — rhythm, rest, and a sense of progress — and there are personality patterns that shape how each person gets there. A company-wide four-day week may not work for everyone, and most managers can't roll one out anyway. But they can start redesigning the workday in small, brain-aligned ways.

A few experiments to try:

• Protect deep-work time. Choose one or two blocks in the day where meetings are discouraged and messages don't need instant replies. Let people know they're allowed to be “heads-down” during this time.
• Make room for breaks. Build in short buffers between meetings. Encourage microbreaks during demanding work and model them yourself, so people don't feel guilty stepping away for five minutes.
• Match tasks to energy and type. Ask team members when they feel most focused, and encourage them to tackle complex work in those windows. Use personality insights to fine-tune: your Introverts may need quiet to start the day; your Extraverts may benefit from collaborative time earlier on; your highly Conscientious employees may need help declaring work “good enough” so they can switch off. Every personality system offers insights you can lean on.

Redesigning the workday based on brain science is an acknowledgment that people are not machines. When you respect the way brains and personalities actually work, you don't just get more out of your team in the short term. You create a rhythm of work that people can sustain,  and even enjoy, for much longer.

 

Vlora Ramadani

Vlora Ramadani is a writer, facilitator, and founder of Almamana, a mindful creative studio. She draws on years of marketing leadership and remote-team experience to explore how personality, alignment, and mindfulness shape the way we work and lead.