Tag: art and mental illness

“That vision of the ‘tortured artist’ — the belief that there is a strong link between creativity and mental illness — is deeply embedded...

Public health researchers at the University of Western Australia examined the relationship between recreational arts engagement and mental well-being in the general population. The results, which have implications for policy makers as well as health practitioners, indicate that those who engage with the arts for two or more hours per week have significantly better mental well-being.

“Service members suffering from PTSD often feel like they’re wearing a mask,” Samantha Allen writes in Invisible Wounds. Melissa Walker, an art therapist, asks them to make one. “The results are stirring. One mask, striped in red and black with hollow chrome-colored eyes, is wrapped in razor wire with a lock where its mouth should be.”

I don't know about you, but sound, audio, music, making mixes on spotify, catching up on my favorite standards on pandora keeps me well...

-Paintings by an artist who has synesthesia, and a study that found no brain-based evidence to support it being a "disorder."

-Artists who have "outsider" ways of thinking and expressing are reportedly becoming more popular with some galleries and collectors.

The Daily Beast reports that Brooklyn artist Marni Kotak is weaning herself off a cocktail of antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs in a Brooklyn gallery...

There was a time when I, as a young woman, had not yet been a prostitute, a heroin addict, a homeless bum, and all that. I was, at that time, a literature student, at a famous school, and things were going well. But an eerie stampede of social workers and mental hospital stays were overshadowing it all. The tentacular reach of psychiatric drugs into the deepest recess of my being was performing a nasty assault on me from within the bloodstream. In order for my life not to be wasted, it became imperative that I get away. So I said goodbye, America. Goodbye, everybody that I used to know.

The road was dark and I only half knew where I was going. East. I couldn’t see through the rearview mirror, because the backseat was piled high with boxes. It didn't matter, there were no other cars on the highway. It was just me, in the middle of the night, driving and crying.