This week in Mental Illness – A must read!
What’s been happening in mental health? – w/e May 24 2015
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It’s amazing what you find when you take a poke around the internet – especially with mental health issues. Lets take a dig at a selection of articles on Mental Illness that I’ve found around the internet.
Using Visual Diaries in Mental Illness
I liked this article on Brain Pickings. It shared the artistic journey of Visual Arts student, Marissa Betley. Betley interviews people on the realities of life with mental illness and communicates this through artistic drawings. Don’t be intimidated by the few ‘biggish’ words that accompanies this fabulous piece; there are lots of imagery too that speaks volumes. One I liked was the one with the caption “I hate that support groups can sometimes feel like secret societies.” Doesn’t it just? A lot of people think that when you are suffering mentally that you are unable to create or do anything artistic at all. Betley shares how untrue that is with the rest of the world.
Project 1 in 4 – Brain Pickings Thu, 21 May 2015
Reminiscent in spirit of artist Bobby Baker’s courageous visual diary of mental illness and the breath-stopping Drawing Autism project, but substantially different in style, Betley’s deliberately unelaborate drawings capture the …
Is there anything as a Fun Mental Disorder Diagnostic Quiz?
Mental health often gets bad press, but it is said that 89% of mental illness is ‘cured’ when the person recovers. However, Play Buzz seems to think that mental illness is something that can be gauged from a quiz, and that it’s ‘fun’. (Reminds me of the High Street Retailer, Joy, got coined with the term #joycott after putting their foot in the mouth last year with a greeting card which went on sale. The card said don’t get mad, take lithium). No quiz required to check if Play Buzz overstepped their mark here…
Playbuzz: Making Fun of Mental Illness & Bipolar Thu, 21 May 2015
Playbuzz, the self-proclaimed “#1 shared Publisher on Facebook,” apparently thinks making fun of mental illness is perfectly a-okay by them. They have a quiz called “How Bipolar Are You?” that’s generated over 4,600 …
Child Mental Health really matters!
It is an incredibly brave thing for anyone to share their mental illness journey, and even more so when it is a Hollywood actress, or someone in the limelight. In this article, Mara Wilson does just that. Mara is best known for her roles as Natalie Hillard in Mrs. Doubtfire. I was shocked to learn in this post that 46.3% of 13-18 year olds have a diagnosable mental illness in the USA! That’s nearly half of teenagers. Anyway, having recovered from the shock, back to Mara… the question should to be asked, “Are we expecting too much from our child actors?”
Smart Girl Mara Wilson Discusses Mental Illness Wed, May 13 2015
Mental Illness can mean a lot of different things and manifest in several forms. For as little as we talk about it publicly though, emotional distress is.
We are not the only ones talking about mental illness and stigma
Student life on campus can be stressful – Think about it, you are away from home for the first time; as exciting as this may sound, when reality hits the fan, it can be quite overwhelming. There are coursework pressures, exam pressures, social pressures,… money pressures!! Do all these factors affect student mental well being, and how does the effects of some of these pressures affect them in the future? The video post in the article below talks about confronting the stigma of mental illness; Stigma awareness as you know is something that we’re doing every day on this site aka Defying Mental Illness!
Confronting the Stigma of Mental Illness Wed, 13 May 2015
Millions of people live with a mental health condition including individuals who work in Student Affairs. Yet, as we discuss mental illness concerns on campus,
These are just 4 of the great articles on mental illness in the last couple of weeks. Please check them out and tell me what you think and what you’d add to the conversation!
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