Can hospitalization disrupt childhood in ways medicine alone cannot repair?

Call biomedicine what you want -Western, conventional, mainstream, etc.- for every name captures how much of a cornerstone to the modern medical field this science is. The field has worked on a multitude of life-changing diseases, from tackling sickle cell disease through gene-editing therapy, to leukemia through marrow transplants. These successes of this field have earned its extreme prevalence, and yet it fails in many regards. Biomedicine is effective as medical intervention, but because it is so focused on the elimination of the disease instead of the general, long-term health of the patient, it falls short. These shortcomings are especially visible with children.

Children’s hospitals encapsulate how the field fails to foster the nurturing environment that developing children need in favor of single-minded clinical pursuits. The current state of children’s hospitalization limits children’s growth in all areas -particularly in children’s development, socialization skills, and mental health- and these effects run deep. So although medicine can treat physical illness, it cannot restore the important childhood milestones necessary for children’s long-term health. For children to truly be healthy, hospitals should include spaces for artistic, communal play that can preserve a patient's childhood. 

Creating spaces for art tackle the first major concern with childhood hospitalization; the absence of necessary stimulations beneficial to childhood development. This includes sensory variety like color, opportunities for motor-skill practice, and cognitive stimuli like games. Children are incredibly affected by their environment, more so than adults, and being confined to spaces devoid of opportunities for growth causes developmental delays that can create a “life crisis for the preschool child” (Bhandari, et. al, 2025). One crucial sphere of development is children’s cognitive functions; in analyzing the school readiness of children with chronic illness, a study found that hospitalized children were “developmentally vulnerable on all domains” (Bell et al., 2016). Notably, this vulnerability was not the result of the disease itself, establishing that children with chronic illnesses are put at risk developmentally due to conventional medicine’s neglect of factors beyond clinical care. In addition to impacting cognitive development, hospitalization limits children’s expansion of their motor skills because their design is “poorly adapted to the child's needs of stimulation” (Pufal, et. al, 2018). There is not proper space for individual children, particularly infants, to explore or toys to learn to manipulate. In the case of hospitalized infants, “hospital admission of at least 30 days resulted in inadequate infant development” and the longer the child was in the hospital, the greater the motor impairment (Pufal, et. al, 2018).

Delaying development so early in life has long-term effects, such as weakening muscle growth, hindering basic movement, and it can even contribute to the academic vulnerability mentioned previously. These delays, both in motor and cognitive function, are the result of a lack of stimulation and opportunity, but art provides the color, variety, and engagement necessary to reduce -or avoid altogether- developmental setbacks. Providing children with ways to paint, color, draw, etc. allows them to think critically about their supplies and creatively about their ideas -thus supporting cognitive development- and using utensils like brushes, crayons, scissors, etc. help to develop the gross and fine motor skills that may otherwise be neglected during hospital care. Opportunities to make art -whether that be through supplies in patient rooms, lobby spaces, etc.- can give children the space to move and grow.

Not only are milestones in cognitive and motor development missed through hospitalization, but the development of a child’s socialization skills are disrupted, too. There are several social spaces characteristic to a healthy childhood -the home, school, daycare, extracurriculars, etc.- but when a child is hospitalized, they are isolated from these spaces, creating feelings of estrangement, and making social situations unfamiliar and anxiety-inducing for children. The breakdown of these social bonds, or inability to form them at all, is reflected in the mother-child relationship. A longitudinal study found that hospitalized children had “a higher rate of mother-child relationship difficulties” due to “a combination of prolonged initial hospitalization, repeated readmissions,” and strain on familial connections.

Hospitalization not only disrupts how children build their social skills, but it also impacts the crucial connections that they have. Children in hospitals should be able to maintain strong connections with their parents, since family is an incredibly life-sustaining support system, the mother-child relationship being the most foundational to social development and well-being. The field of biomedicine should consider how to ensure strong relationships are fostered within hospital walls, and artistic play spaces would be an effective solution. Making play spaces communal would allow children to experience social situations that they otherwise would be isolated from, and would be especially effective since patients could interact with other children facing the same difficulties, lessening the feeling of isolation, but would most particularly support the mother-child bond. An open art space would allow the mother and child to interact imaginatively, collaborate through art, and converse in a space with fewer stressors.  By preserving social bonds and equipping children with the skills to form them, hospitals can set their patients up for success and happiness in the future. 

The physical effects of hospitalization go well past the actual disease, chronic illness, etc., for which the child was hospitalized; hospitals create anxiety-inducing systems and experiences that take a toll on children’s mental health and nervous system for the rest of their life. Anxiety is common to children as they experience and learn from new things, but a child being constantly thrust into new treatments with unfamiliar medicines and equipment, into new meetings with strangers, and all while being unable to understand any of these situations or the weight of their own medical condition, that anxiety is heightened, perpetual, and quickly internalized. This anxiety can develop into coping mechanisms, like “bedwetting and thumb-sucking,” that alter behavior completely, and can contribute to post-traumatic stress disorder later on in life, as well as aggression  (Bhandari, et. al, 2025). Separation anxiety is a specific concern for children as their isolation from family and friends may be exacerbated by a growing “fear of medical procedures combined with unfamiliar surroundings,” and encapsulates the impact that long-term hospitalization can have on children’s mental health.

Developing serious anxieties so early in life impacts children’s developing nervous systems; according to an article from the International Society of Psycho­neuro­endocrinology, exposure to early life stress can restructure key neural networks that manage stress regulation, and “can result in enduring neuroendocrine changes that elevate the cumulative risk of disease vulnerability in adulthood” (Venn, 2025). It is ironic that the field of biomedicine induces stress through disease treatment could later create vulnerability to disease, but this is painfully true for children in hospitals. This impact goes beyond the neural damage of stress; when hospitalizations increase, their quality of life lessens (Fardell, et. al, 2023). The field of biomedicine should consider children’s health in all ways, not just through seeing children as the target of a single health concern. Curing or eliminating a disease goes beyond just addressing the disease itself; it means caring for the patient as a whole, especially when that patient is a child who will feel the lasting effects of their hospital experience. 

Creating shared play spaces with artistic opportunities could address this concern, too. Art has been proven time and time again to be an efficient form of stress relief. Having the space to work quietly or collaboratively, to be away from the many sounds of the hospital, and focus on having fun could greatly improve children’s experiences in hospitals and lessen the weight of their anxiety. Additionally, art spaces can serve as a place for doctors and patients to interact; involving healthcare professionals in child’s play makes care more humanized and opens up opportunities to “establish communication between the professional and the child,” which can help children better understand their situation and treatments, and this clarity can dispel the uncertainty and stress surrounding the hospital experience as a whole. Ensuring that children are able to regulate themselves in safe spaces, understand their condition, and trust in those caring for them are vital in improving the conditions of hospitalization. 

In conclusion, play spaces that include artistic activities should be created in order to benefit the children in clinical care. Today’s systems of conventional care lack support for children in three key ways: cognitive and motor development, socialization skills, and emotional stability. Involving art in hospitals can be the cure medicine fails to be. Art as stress relief, a social space, and a mode of development has unimaginable benefits for hospitalized children whose childhoods may otherwise be shattered. Humanizing care in the field of biomedicine by including spaces for art is the first step in bettering the clinical conditions of children’s healthcare. 

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