WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (WGHP) — From surgical suites and MRIs to guitars and paint brushes, United Health Centers is embracing not just traditional medicine, but also the arts. Arts for Everybody is a national initiative working in 18 cities including Winston-Salem, and just like there are many kinds of medicine, there are many forms of art. "We have music, we have dance, we have theater, we have skits. We have visual arts," says Issis Kelly, the program manager for Arts for Everybody. The project focuses on using the arts to support good physical and mental health, showing people that they are not alone and reducing loneliness.  "By reducing the stress and loneliness, there's a lot of diseases that are caused by those problems that it helps," she says. "So, it can help you lower your blood pressure. It can help reduce dementia .... People that participate in art sleep longer, and they have a better quality of life." Loneliness and isolation reached epidemic levels during the COVID pandemic. Now health leaders are more aware of the impact on their patients' mental health. Kelly says United Health Centers help during a mental health crisis when the Forsyth County Department of Behavioral Health and the BEAR team get called. "If you think of BEAR as a bear hugging you in a nice way, and this is a team that when there is a problem, somebody with mental illness, or maybe somebody that is trying to commit suicide, it's an integrated team that includes the city and the county and our medical providers that go and take care of that person and that family." United Health Centers has been hosting art events and offering art-centered counseling for people of all ages from as young as 3 to as old as 98, and it's not just for people who paint or draw well. "Just take a pen and doodle and just start with a circle," says Kelly. "Take a dot, take it for a walk. That will make a line, and then you go from there. It doesn't have to be anything that you can exhibit in a gallery.... So, if you are really excited or mad or sad, doodling for 10 minutes, just having that motion through the paper, even if you're not doing anything really...will bring your body back to your normal center self." For more information on Arts for Everybody, visit their website.