“not only did I love art, I am told that I was good at it. But I did not see the good in my artwork. My teachers saw deeply detailed pencil portraits; I saw wonky features. They saw vibrant paintings of flowers and fruit; I saw embarrassing, childlike imitations of real life.” … More Insight Interview: Tio Lishomwa
“I’d like to change the concept of someone who has stress as some pathetic, weak and unwashed cretin who lays in bed in a dressing gown all day. This was me on my days off, but I also (very successfully) held down a demanding, full-time job, a social life, and a healthy romantic relationship. You can be high-functioning and full to the brim with stress. That doesn’t make it okay; it just makes it real.” … More Insight Interview: Sylvia Bennett
“There is one positive that I do try to hold on from this – like I said it makes me sound like a contradiction when I explain it – but it helps to remind myself that my mental illness isn’t me.” … More Insight Interview – TJ Barker
When you think of representations of mental health in video games, what do you think of? For me, the primary image is of Batman: Arkham Asylum. While I loved this game, looking back, I recall the damp, decrepit building over-run by violent and dangerous criminals that seemed to symbolise the games central theme for me: … More Purely Discursive: Playing A Dangerous Game? Mental Health and Video Games
“I’d also argue against anyone who says that patients with mental health are violent or dangerous. I feel more at risk in a busy, dodgy pub on a Saturday night, or walking to my car late at night. It is a statistical fact that people with a mental illness are more likely to be the victim of an assault than be the perpetrator. We’ve allowed ourselves to be caught in a narrative that we should fear individuals with a mental illness.” … More Insight Interview – Maida Vale
Over time, conditions like depression and suicide have been covered with varying degrees of success across different soaps, throwing a light on these conditions and what it is like to live with them.
For this reason, I’d like to spend this month’s Purely Discursive post looking at why soap opera storylines about mental health are needed. … More Purely Discursive: Mental Health and Soaps
“Whenever I’ve talked to friends about my anxieties, they’ve always been awesome. Sometimes it’s even led to a deeper discussion about the state of their mental health as well and just a general feeling of better understanding each other, which is great. It’s like a feeling of ‘we’re all in this together’ as opposed to feeling like I’m battling it alone. It may be hard to find a way into the conversation, but talking is healthy.” … More Insight Interview – Duncan Stockwell
If you’re half as much of a soap opera fan as I’ve (secretly) become recently, you’ll have seen Coronation Street’s recent storyline involving the death of Aidan Connor by suicide.
While watching this episode, I was struck by how sensitive Coronation Street’s portrayal of Aidan’s suicide was. It’s for this reason that I wanted to write a blog post about this episode, its impact and why storylines such as this one are so important. … More Purely Discursive: Coronation Street – A Case Study in Media Portrayals of Suicide
“The worst bit of stigma and discrimination I’ve ever faced came from someone who I once consider my best guy friend. He told me I should never have children because he felt sorry for whoever I brought into this world (because of my mental health), and he felt sorry for anyone who knew me. Because of him, I’m now afraid of him. He’ll never know how much he hurt me, not just in a stigma and discrimination sense as well.” … More Insight Interview – Laura Ann Moulding
it is important to recognise that these reports typically tend to simplify the reasons behind the violent crime, so that it is solely attributed to the mental illness itself. Contextual factors, such as social and cultural contributors that could have provoked the event, are often overlooked for a solitary cause: mental illness. … More Purely Discursive: Mental Illness and Violence – Media Reporting and its Consequences
Mentally Discursive 