Artists with Mental Health
I wanted to put a light on mental health in the art world. The first pictures show the posture an individual uses when feeling overwhelmed. The second pictures reflect the individual's response to those feelings. When I was taking pictures of my subjects, I interviewed them in order to better understand their mental health challenges. I shared some of the responses below so people can understand what the subjects are going through and how they might handle it.
Subject 1
She has depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. At first she thought nothing could fix it, she had no one to talk to and she was all alone. When she started talking to her friend who was going through the same thing as her, her friend told her she should go see a therapist. Remy has known about my anxiety from a young age, but as she started going to therapy she began to learn more about herself and her mental state. This is when she learned that she had depression.
When her depression gets bad she cleans and listens to music. And usually when she has a panic attack she calls her friends or family. But one day she had a panic attack for about 10 hours. Going to therapy after that day she learned about stress balls and how to use them. Now she either squeeze her stress ball, throw it from one hand to another, or bounce it up and down on her desk. To this day even though her mental illnesses aren’t gone she finds different ways to cope with them.
Subject 2
She has anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Mental health runs in her family. When she was young she was bullied for being too skinny but the reason she was so skinny was to hide in nooks in her house so one of her family members wasn’t able to beat her. One day she thought that everyone would be fine without her and it would help her family financially so this led to her first sucidal attempt, luckily her oldest sister found her and stopped her. When she was doing high fashion modeling she couldn’t have scars. She also was scared of knives because she would think of harming herself and from seeing her mom put her head on a cutting board and a knife to her neck. She thought modeling was her way out and she was scared to harm herself because she wouldn’t be able to model.
The way that she copes is by drawing on herself with sharpies. This in a way calms her down because art is how she expresses how she feels. She would have anxiety attacks being at school so she would make sure to have sharpies with her while she was there so if certain friends saw her with a drawing on her arm it was to let them know everything is not okay. She always draws plants on herself because she thinks of her grandmother. Her grandmother used to garden and she was the sweetest person to her. Her grandmother’s house used to be her safe place. Drawing the plants was a way to remember her safe place and to ground her.
