Faced with the problem of professional burnout in its industry, the Quebec music community can now count on new help. Launched last month, the Psychological Center for Artists (CPPA) aims to help artists develop “mental health hygiene” through continuing training and support for artists (of all disciplines) and organizations working to promote their influence, summarizes Florence Khoriaty, musician known to the public as Florence K, doctoral candidate in psychology and co-founder of the young company.
Constituted as a social economy enterprise, the CPPA operates initially by subscription (between $50 and $150 per year, depending on the income of the members or their status, whether artist or organization), which will ensure, as of this fall, individual members a personalized support. Becoming a member of the CPPA also entitles you to preferential rates on conferences and continuing education, the Center’s other source of income.
Inaugurated without fanfare, the Center already has around twenty members, including the Artists’ Union (which set up its own Artists’ Foundation and its Psychosocial Support Fund for artists and workers in the cultural sector). A crowdfunding campaign will soon be set up, confirms Jean-Pascal Lafrance, general director of the CPPA.
The launch of a website last February is a first (digital) stone in the building of the CPPA “which aims to support artists by promoting their mental health and preventing issues related to their profession. We offer tailored support and training that takes into account the entire ecosystem of artists,” we can read on the site.
Its administrators seek to prevent not only professional burnout in the field, but also other mental health disorders. “Mental health is vast,” says Florence Khoriaty. Burnout, bipolar disorder — a rather chronic and temperamental illness since birth —, substance abuse, the tendency to create episodes of mania, etc. », specifies the doctoral student, who turned to psychology after having herself experienced a “major depression” in 2011.
She looked into the mental health of artists, an environment that revealed it to the general public; Florence K confirms that “data, taken from international studies, show that there is a higher prevalence of psychological distress among artists than in the general population”. No study has yet looked at the state of the music industry, “but we know that there are cases, we know that things are bad. The conditions are not in place to help artists” and those who support them.
Because in his opinion, artists and shadow workers work in comparable conditions in several respects: due to the general decline in income in the industry and its inadequate financing, “the amount of work that you provide in order to have the hope of having the same income as before is disproportionate, which creates a feeling of frustration. Because no matter the value of your work or the time you put into it, the reward will not be up to it. This industry [musicale] lives on an artificial respirator.
The CPPA will not provide answers to the systemic underfunding of the environment, but its administrators (the social economy enterprise currently employs four people) are convinced of being able to offer tools to confront the evil that is gnawing at the environment. .
“Financial insecurity obviously has a terrible impact on psychological distress and professional burnout, but the artistic community also lacks a culture of mental hygiene, as much among artists as among the workforce and industry organizations. There is no continuing training on well-being yet. We need to establish a culture of communication on mental health and give the community the tools, and that’s what we want to do at the CPPA. »