Mental Illness Discussion

Today we sat down and had a open discussion about what mental illness was to us as individuals and how we feel about it. I feel that it was important to do this before our performance because the foundation of our experimental piece is mental health therefore it would be helpful to discuss what it is and what it means for those affected by it and those suffering from it. Personally, it was interesting hearing what people similar to myself feel about it as everyone in the room discussing it was around the same age group as me. Seeing as it is a very personal thing that can affect people in a various number of ways it was important that we addressed the subject in a sensitive way because it was important not to offend or make anyone feel guilty or uncomfortable for sharing their experience with mental illness.

Personally, I said that I felt that it was interesting that someone else's mental illness is something that you don't really notice is a problem or problematic until you learn that mental illness is a problem in itself and that you can just associate the 'symptoms' of the illness as just behavioural traits that come natural to the individual that you know and because you are so used to that person behaving in that way, it takes time, knowledge, a bit of growing up and some maturing to ever come to terms with the fact that that person actual suffers from a mental illness.

Others mentioned that:

• its not just the sufferer that is affected by the mental illness, a lot of the time the people around them e.g. family and friends are affected.
• mental illnesses often effect people differently
• there is often a spectrum of varying versions of one illness; some that are more severe and some that are less 

We were next asked what society could do to help sufferers:

I mentioned that often the accurate diagnosis of a mental illness can sometimes help the sufferer in knowing what is causing them to behave or think in the way that they do. Sometime its helpful to have clarification that you are suffering from something real. I think this makes it easier to help address the mental illness because it means you know exactly what your up against and what it is that is a problem for you.

Others said that:

•  its helpful to have your own feelings toward the illness and have them validated without people telling you that they once felt the same and that they understand it or giving examples of 'similar' experiences that they have been through or no of. This is helpful because its nice to know that your feelings are yours.
• its helpful that the people around you know that the family and friends of the sufferer can be affected by their illness too. 

I agree with all of the above statements and feel that it was great to just speak about the subject as a class and not feel criticized about my individual feelings towards the subject because there was a mutual understanding in the room that everyone had their own experiences and feelings about mental illnesses. Discussing the subject, made it clearer to me perhaps why and how mental illness may be linked to creativity. Here's how:

I feel that everyone has a different idea about what mental illness is and how much it actually means however only the people affected by mental health know what it really means. This must mean that a lot of the time mental illness and mental health are often misunderstood and or misinterpreted as something else leaving sufferers and people close to the sufferer feeling as though they cannot be understood by other people and that they need to express feelings towards the illness and in a lot of other cases feelings towards other things through another medium. This medium can often be creativity. Through creativity you don't have to speak, you don't have to justify and anything and you don't have to expose your own self and make your self vulnerable to other people that will choose to be close-minded or just not understand. Creativity offers freedom. In some suffers of mental illnesses that I have spoken to they have often told me that they don't very much feel free. If creativity offers freedom then it is easy to see why anyone would resort to doing something creative in order to escape.