Wednesday 16 August 2017

Mental Health and Art




I have a tendency to be a very private person, revealing the more personal aspects of my life and personality only to selected individuals.  Over recent years this aspect of my nature has gradually changed and I have developed a more open policy.  This post is a case in point.

As far back as I can remember I have always felt that I thought differently to everyone else and my degree of emotional control has always been tenuous at best.  I experienced wild and unpredictable bouts of both depression and mania as a child and teenager, all of which made me very difficult for my parents to either understand or control.

As the years progressed, this aspect of my nature drove me to make some incredibly poor choices in my life and I was generally not a very nice person to know.  Ultimately I suffered a number of severe break-downs and numerous serious suicide attempts.

Ultimately I survived and approximately 15 years ago (when I was around 35), following my last major breakdown, I was diagnosed with Bi-polar disorder.  Finally my world started to make sense.

So why am I telling you this?

Well, I don't believe there should be any stigma in mental illness and I have never had an issue with telling those around me of my condition.  Why should I?  It is, after all, a part of who I am and, if I expect people to interact with me in anything like an effective manner then I believe this information is useful for them to have.

I refuse medication for my condition and have learnt over the years how best to control this aspect of my mentality and use it's quirks to my benefit.  This is why I write and sing and paint.  There are times when my mental state is perfectly suited to these endeavours and during those times I work, and work hard.  At other times when my  mind refuses to function in a satisfactory way, I simply avoid these pursuits and retreat from the world until these periods have passed.

This strategy has allowed me to be very productive and, in some small way, successful.

I am writing this piece to illustrate the importance of awareness and acceptance for individuals like myself.  We have as much to offer this world as anyone else, we just need to find a different way of doing things and we should be allowed to explore that without stigma and/or prejudice.

There is an organisation which i support and am a member of in the UK.  It is called "Mind" .

They are a national charity that supports and champions those with Mental Health issues.

This year they have a competition running, looking for art that expresses the "Workings of My Mind".  I chose to enter a piece of artwork into this competition and I am very proud to say that, although the competition is still running, my entry is one of a number that has been chosen to help promote the competition and, by association, the charity itself.



I hope that this little revelation of mine helps, in some small way, those who are struggling with their own mental health.

I painted this a number of years ago immediately following my last major nervous break-down.  It was a time of incredible darkness and despair for me, yet from it sprang a wealth of creativity which only now sees its real use.

Never give up.  There is always a path through the darkness and the light will always wait for you to reach it.

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