Featuring;
Alisha Bradbury Amie Gwyther-Legros Izzi Lewin Jacob Hoffman Jake Smith Sarah Garfield and a special thanks to any others who sent us your work...
1 in 4 people in the uk have a mental illness Coming to terms with myself who suffers from mental health issues such as anxiety and depression; it has been hard for me trying to balance my academic life and other simple everyday tasks. These are the two mental illness' that I wanted to focus on with this project. There are many ways that people deal with their issues and a lot of them are self-destructive such as smoking, alcoholism and self-harm but I do not want to romanticise these so I only focused on positive coping mechanisms. I'm able to use art and photography to really help me with coping with it and they have really become a way to channel and express my emotions and use them positively. There is clearly quite a big link between creativity and mental health which I have noticed in recent years meeting other people who are in creative industries too and I want to explore that with my project. I did this by finding fellow creatives who suffer from mental illness' themselves and saw what it is that they have found to help them deal with their issues. I photographed artists, photographers, fashion designers and musicians. I took portraits on medium format of these people in their 'own spaces' such as their bedrooms, gardens and places that they generally are when they get that creative 'spark'. My aim was to show a world that people know exists but don't really talk about. I want people, including myself to realise that they're not alone and raise awareness to people who aren't particularly aware of this dark world and what it's like growing up under the pressure of society who just assume everyone has to be happy all the time and that it's okay to be sad and different.
Interviewer: What is your official job title / field of study? Professor Goodyer: Emeritus Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Cambridge University . Formerly an Honorary Consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry. Interviewer:Do you yourself suffer from any mental health problems? Professor Goodyer: No, I have never had a mental illness which is fortunate. Interviewer:Do you feel that there are certain ways that people can deal with their problems other than taking prescribed medication or speaking to a professional? Professor Goodyer : For mild depressions where a person feels low tired and struggling to keep going, most will benefit from keeping active, talking with family and friends and carrying on at work or education although it may be more effortful. Very few will need to seek help and most episodes will resolve within 6-12 weeks. If not recovered or getting worse with time then move to the moderate depressions section. For moderate depressions where together with the above symptoms a person thinks things are rather hopeless, may blame oneself, cannot concentrate and is avoiding friends and family, it may be hard to keep going as stated above and seeking support and advice from professionals can be helpful. Most of these people can be seen in primary care such as GP, School counsellors, advisors and support at work. These episodes can also resolve but may take up to 18-24 weeks. There is no need to receive antidepressants in most cases. If not recovered or getting worse with time then move to severe depressions section. Where primary care support and intervention is not resulting in improvement or the patient's gets worse being increasingly depressed, avoiding others, thinking that  life is not worth living and sleeping poorly a course of more formal treatment by a specialist psychological therapist should be arranged. There is no one specialist treatment that is better than another. We do not yet know which of the recommended treatment should be given to what type of depression. If a course of treatment is again not showing benefits within 4-6 weeks then antidepressants should be added. Individuals with recurrent depressions may need antidepressants and psychological treatment at the beginning of their second or third episode.
Interviewer: What is your opinion on art therapy? Professor Goodyer: A very good addition to therapies for mild depressions and as an aid to recovery for those responding to active psychosocial techniques. There is no evidence that art therapy alone is effective in reducing depressive symptoms in adolescents or young adults. Interviewer: What do you think of the concept that creativity and mental health are linked in some way? Professor Goodyer: This has been a source of intense anecdotal study but not through modern scientific methods. It all depends what is meant by creativity and that is a difficult word to define succinctly. Various selected creative groups have been noted as showing more mental illness than one might expect including composers, musicians and authors. Generally, these individuals are reported as suffering mood disorders including depression and bipolar disorder.  I am not sure myself there is any real causal link between creativity and any mental illness. Interviewer: Have you in the past suggested that people use creativity as form of therapy? Professor Goodyer: “Yes, I have especially in those who showed such skills before their depression. I think both music and art therapies have a role to play in recovery from mental illness but I prefer them to focus on here and now methods minimising interpretations about speculative links between current representation and past personal experience. Interviewer:What are your experiences in seeing art therapy used as a treatment method? Professor Goodyer: I do not have much experience but as I said it seems a useful addition for recovery and rehabilitation from mental illness.
I
was diagnosed with mental health issues just over a year ago and have made art ever since I can remember, it's always been a way in which I have communicated feelings and thoughts back to myself. When I was younger I would draw more as a way of materialising the made-up things and people in my imagination, but now most of my drawings are more like self-portraits, although they don't always look like me. Creating things, making music and art, is one of the only things that I can rely on to bring my mood back up when I'm struggling. It really helps me to stay productive and see positive things coming out of bad feelings, like a bit of an emotional cleanse. By drawing a mental state, I'm able to understand it better and this makes day-to-day life more interesting and less overwhelming as I become more familiar with my emotions. I have had some art therapy before and it can be really useful for artists who want to loosen up a bit and focus more on mindfulness than perfection. Luckily, I can now see a difference between wanting to do some mindfulness drawing and having an idea that I want to execute in a delicate and precise way, and can do both interchangeably. I find being at University quite tough on my mental health. I don't study a creative degree, so I have to challenge myself to balance my academic work and my illustration work and this can sometimes be quite difficult because wanting to sit and draw for hours comes more naturally to me than writing essays. I have really high standards for myself so sometimes I get too stressed about a particular piece of work and this can lead to me burning out by the time it's finished and experiencing creative block. I think I find the feeling of anonymity that comes from being in such a large university and student city such as Bristol can be quite hard too, it's quite isolating and impersonal.
Art, fashion photography and music have always been a huge part of my life, and
growing up I would attend life drawing lessons, dance classes and scouts in order to find ways to express how I felt and meet more people like myself. I can remember feeling having feelings of depression and anxiety since I was 15 years old but was diagnosed when I was 16 with Panic disorder, Anxiety and depression which was during my GCSE exam period. Although I have never been to a prescribed art therapy, I find that my depression often allows me to isolate myself from the world around me which is when I am most creative. Being alone in my own personal space encourages me to think and question things more which is then transferred creatively into my diary and sketchbooks and I have started to transcribe this into my current  A-level art project which is based off of my own personal experience of heartbreak and the effects it has had on my depression. Although I am expressing my own personal feelings through my A-level art project, because in the end it is graded, there is a lot of pressure put on what kind of art you should produce, and you are really influenced by what art school and universities expect from you. You're told to follow guidelines and produce work that lives up to exam board expectations, and you often find that you can't always produce the work you want to make. The creative industries , from what I've been told, are very competitive and hard hitting. Young designers are constantly under pressure and this can definitely perpetuate feelings of self doubt and self deprivation. I think these sort of issues should be brought to light more often and fought against within the industry, hopefully evoking change and the support these young designers need.
Although I was only diagnosed officially a
couple of months ago with Generalised Anxiety Disorder and Depression they are some something that I have been struggling with for the past 4 years . I've been artistic from a very young age and I knew I wanted to become a fashion designer when I was 6 years old, even though this has evolved into my wanting to become a fashion stylist, My mum studied interior design so I guess I've got my creative flair from her and was always drawing, sometimes on the walls too, oops! Although I would like to use my creativity as an outlet for when I'm feeling low, for me it's usually  the opposite. I struggle to work when I have depressive or anxious days and tend to go through a creative block. On those days I struggle to see any positivity and I find that if I work or try to work when I am feeling anxious or low, this can be seen in my work as I have a tendency to become lazy and almost throw things together as I lose interest and motivation for anything creative. I would say coming to university has affected my mental health, very much so in fact. For me it's the balancing element that I struggle with. I work at Diesel part time and also intern with Another Man magazine which at times along with university assignments and becomes a lot to handle. I'm not the most organised person in the world and I constantly have new ideas running through my head which then tends to overwhelm me as I try to do everything at once. Being a perfectionist, this clashes and puts me in an anxious position especially becoming frustrated when I don't feel myself and can't complete what I intend to.
I
was diagnosed with depression and anxiety around 18 months ago by a doctor, My mum actually made an appointment for me because I had a 2 or 3 week period towards the end of the summer before starting my last year of school before I decided to leave, where I felt very isolated and alone and this triggered me to become increasingly introspective to a much greater extent than before. I would spend whole days just lying on my bed not talking or doing anything. This all came to a head when my parents tried to find out what was wrong and this ended in a big confrontation which made things a whole lot worse for me. I was 15 at the time.
unmotivated for such a long time, when everything feels tiring and pointless it's almost impossible for me to do anything remotely creative or productive. This had a massive effect on my art coursework, I came close to dropping it altogether several times. As a result my teacher advised me not to take art any further and to consider pursuing art theory instead. I came out with an A in the end, miraculously.
I left school to study contemporary art practice at university and found it to be a massive adjustment. Aberdeen had a huge impact on my experience. It feels very cut off from the rest of the country, it's very small and people there generally have a very narrow view of the world and of people who are individuals. It's culturally dead and in the winter it can be a tough place to live. As a result it triggered my mental health problems again. I have always been in creating art and being creative for as long as I can remember. But during the worst points of my mental illness, I felt very uncreative and
The whole of my first two years of university have been incredibly challenging. A particularly bad time was last semester when my anxiety was at its worst. Overcome with stress and with non existent self esteem,
I experienced nausea on a daily basis, I struggled to think clearly, look after myself or eat well. Social interaction felt impossible and I lived in a compete bubble of dissociation with my surroundings. I felt like the whole world was against me and trying to make art and succeed on the course in these conditions was so difficult for me. I avoided everything and would lie in bed until midday because I didn't want to face my life. This continued for most of the semester until in the last 3 weeks I managed to find the motivation from somewhere to push through and do everything I'd been avoiding. In the end I came out with 4 straight B's which was a big motivator to come into 3rd year and work to the best of my ability. Although it has been pretty up and down and I initially felt very overwhelmed by the competitive nature of my course , I now feel a positive impact from being exposed to the creative industries now that I'm entering into the late stages of my course.
I
have never been diagnosed with a mental illness by a doctor as don't really see the point and don't see the benefit in someone telling me things I already know about myself.. fuck having someone tell me things I've already been aware of the the last 7 years. My biggest problems really centre around depression and I often suffer with dysmorphia around knowing who I am as a person and feeling like whether the work I create is good enough and authentic to myself. I've been creating things all my life in terms of music and art but over the last two years I've definitely been trying harder at it, it's kind of a double edged sword really because I feel like my mental illness will either
really motivate me and cause me to produce the most of my best work but it's a strange one because sometimes I can feel really unmotivated. As well as this it can sometimes feel like I'm trying too hard if I'm trying to create something I don't feel passionate about, which is one of the reasons I don't agree with studying anything creative at school or university. Studying music at university has ruined my passion for it completely because you repeatedly have to jump through hoops and work to somebody else deadline. Art and music are supposed to be things that you're passionate about but if you're being forced to do something that wasn't your idea then how are you supposed to be passionate about it?
It's awful to think about it, but even as I child I struggled with my emotions, bullying and fitting in. It was when I was 11, just before secondary school that I was diagnosed with a mental illness. This started as an eating disorder diagnosis which later developed into many more things including depression, anxiety, OCD and self harm although I wasn’t diagnosed with many of these until my late teens. I was always creative, but I think when you are struggling mentally, all your thought processes become clouded with negative thoughts and it consumes all your energy and enthusiasm to create. People with mental health issues also often suffer with low self-worth, and can be overcritical of their own creative work, which can prevent you from perusing it fully. It wasn't until after I managed to clear my head of negative thoughts and low selfworth that I managed to grow creatively. I think focusing on creating something positive and staying busy and productive helps keep your mind in a good healthy place because you are creating something that you are proud of which can increase your sense of self worth and confidence as a person and in your own abilities. Studying at university affected my mental health quite badly as it was a very high pressured, stressful, competitive environment. I was working myself into exhaustion and was still told by tutors that my work wasn’t good enough, I lacked focus and ‘needed to sleep and eat properly’. They also lacked empathy and understanding for students with mental health issues. There is also a lot of competition among other students, and the can be a bit bitchy at times, particularly towards students they view as having 'problems'. Retrospectively though, my
tough experience at university made me a much much stronger and in a sense more mentally stable person which I am thankful for. There is the pressure that if you work in fashion you should never sleep, and there was a lot of competition amongst students of who slept the least, who did the most ‘all-nighters’, which is dangerous and destructive. Although the industry is changing, the ideal body type is still very slender, and I do feel that deciding to take a path in fashion has somewhat prevented me from being 'fully recovered' from my eating disorder. I wouldn't say that looking at ‘skinny models’ was the main cause of my eating disorder, but as I slightly chubby and awkward child, in my teens I wanted to emulate this willowy look. I think the pressure on young designers and the competitiveness has reached extreme and unhealthy levels. I have heard of cases of fashion students committing suicide from the pressure and look at Alexander McQueen! The industry needs to realise that designers may be gifted but are not super-human machines! Also can we stop glamorising drug abuse, alcoholism and depression in creative industries. It is not cool to die at 27, it is tragic loss to what could have been. Can we please stop romanticising the 'tortured artist' and the cliche that you have suffer to be inspired to produce meaningful work? I'm not saying that you can’t channel it into your work, I certainly do, but it is helpful for your wellbeing to also to take inspiration from positive places, feelings and memories.