MADNESS: Fighting for Justice in Mental Health
What does it mean to have a just mental health care system and who has access to it? Who decides who is labelled as mad?
In order to achieve a more just and compassionate approach to mental health, it is necessary to learn to pay attention and develop a shared understanding of the individual experience of “madness”. This will consequently make it possible to develop better coping strategies for people living with mental health conditions. Artistic practices are an obvious way of making these conditions experienceable.
At the same time, artistic practices can serve as a coping strategy in themselves. They not only give survivors an opportunity to process their personal experiences, but can also be vehicles in the survivors’ fight for social justice and self-empowerment. This will be illustrated through the work of the speakers on the panel. They present three approaches to artmaking, which are different in their format, style and thematic focus, but they are all deeply insightful, subversive and transformative.
In my talk, I focused on the process of artistic creation as a therapeutical, as well as emancipatory process, and on the different aspects of working with art when the artist is also affected by different mental conditions. In this regard I looked at the potential of artwork to be educational, transformative, to create a social discourse out of an individual expression, and to promote healing for others.
While the Conference I participated in the Sentire project. Sentire is a participatory performance project that translates human interactions into sounds.
MADNESS: Fighting for Justice in Mental Health
What does it mean to have a just mental health care system and who has access to it? Who decides who is labelled as mad?
In order to achieve a more just and compassionate approach to mental health, it is necessary to learn to pay attention and develop a shared understanding of the individual experience of “madness”. This will consequently make it possible to develop better coping strategies for people living with mental health conditions. Artistic practices are an obvious way of making these conditions experienceable.
At the same time, artistic practices can serve as a coping strategy in themselves. They not only give survivors an opportunity to process their personal experiences, but can also be vehicles in the survivors’ fight for social justice and self-empowerment. This will be illustrated through the work of the speakers on the panel. They present three approaches to artmaking, which are different in their format, style and thematic focus, but they are all deeply insightful, subversive and transformative.
In my talk, I focused on the process of artistic creation as a therapeutical, as well as emancipatory process, and on the different aspects of working with art when the artist is also affected by different mental conditions. In this regard I looked at the potential of artwork to be educational, transformative, to create a social discourse out of an individual expression, and to promote healing for others.
While the Conference I participated in the Sentire project. Sentire is a participatory performance project that translates human interactions into sounds.
