TAKECARE

SPRING 2019

TAKECARE A ZINE ABOUT SELF-CARE, HEALING, AND MENTAL HEALTHÂ

BY NAMI @ CAL

mission statement We, members of the National Alliance on Mental Illness at UC Berkeley, are dedicated to NAMI’s mission of building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness through oncampus peer-led mental health education, community-building, and advocacy. Our fall zine publication, T A K E C A R E, will serve these goals by providing a space for students and community members with mental illness to share and synthesize their experiences (and struggles) with healing, radical acceptance, empathy, self-love, and self-care.

Mental health is not a linear progression nor a binary; and, for better or for worse, there is no one fixed prescription to permanent mental and emotional wellness. While this ambiguity can feel chaotic, disappointing, and frightening to those living with mental illness, we believe that through our collective creativity, empathy, and solidarity, we can find a way to not just survive our struggles but actually grow from them. We believe that caring for our community begins with caring for ourselves, and then showing others how to do the same. We believe in the strength and resilience of the human spirit, which persists both in spite of and because of our struggles, sensitivities, and intersectionalities.

For this issue, we welcomed both students and members of the public who have been affected in any way by mental illness to submit art or writing on the subject of healing and self-care. This zine will be sold to raise money in support of NAMI’s public policy reform and research advocacy efforts. We hope you enjoy and consider submitting to our next creative project!

Thank you, and please, take care! <3

Mental Health Statistics

In American Adults

In College Students million (18%) have any mental health 63% report feeling lonely condition 51% report feeling hopeless 9.6 million (22%) experience suicidal 39% report experiencing depressive ideation episodes 4.2 million (1.2%) live with Anxiety 60% report experiencing anxiety Disorder 16 million (5%) live with Major Depression 3.5 million (1.1%) live with schizophrenia 8.5 million (2.6%) live with bipolar disorder

In LGBTQ+ Communities 3x more likely to experience conditions like depression or anxiety Suicide is the leading cause of death (ages 10-24) Teens are 6x more likely to experience depression

In Disadvantaged & Minority Communities Black & Latinx individuals are more likely to experience persistent depression Multiracial individuals are more likely to report any mental illness than any other ethnic group 50-75% of incarcerated youth show risk of mental health conditions

Sources: Mental Health America National Alliance on Mental Illness American College Health Association American Psychiatric Association

Mental Health Resources

ASUC list of mental & physical health resources in the Berkeley area: https://asuc.org/wellness/ 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 24/7 Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 Trans Lifeline (7am - 1am): 877-565-8860 24/7 TrevorLifeLine for LGBTQ+ youth: 1-866-488-7386 Tang CAPS (Counseling & Psychological Services): 510-642-9494 Tang After-Hours Counseling: 855-817-5667 NAMI: https://nami.org/ NAMI @ CAL: https://www.facebook.com/ucberkeleynami International OCD Foundation: https://iocdf.org/

Untitled Sarah Tsung

Untitled: Christine Baik (top), Untitled: Anonymous (bottom)

-infinite

Emily Burns are these past timelines i sift through. stories spattered with recreations and reiterations of selves that could have been. or perhaps should have been. they are drowsy against my lips, almost as familiar as the warmth of your shoulder against mine as we lean deep into stale airline cushions. flying towards a home i have finally begun to build / / i don't have smile lines, not like yours. sometimes i wish i did, nestled there at the corners of wide eyes, interknit rivers flowing into respective earthy pools. but i do have a heart-shaped callus, webbed against left third finger where pencil presses to skin. a testament to an abundance of vividness too real to persist without their paper houses. and i am learning that that is enough / / i have been trying to show you this vividness, so clear behind my eyes, as we jet through the crystal blues of a sunlit sky. there are people awake and mobile, as they tend to be, miles beneath us. a buzzing reality pulling further and further out of reach. but still i try. try to explain to you why this azure vastness spread thick with silverlined clouds can bring tears to eyes that are otherwise abstinently dry / / they make you laugh, my persistent, feeble explanations. each echo a softness. at every peal, eyes crinkling up in a way that reminds me of a past life. and i have to look away. some things are too beautiful to meet eye to naked eye / / instead, i brush my fingers to the back of your neck and hope that you hear me. hear this story told in a possibility bound by my own unease. and know we are not in love, but rather wade into the betweenness of now and next. that ours is an incalculable rebirth of temporary collections, affection decided and ended within each moment / / maybe you realize this too, in your own way. and with this i am okay. thankful, in fact, for your inability to see how planes of clouds can hit the sunlight just so. how choice is often a tenacious coloring-in of cardboard self. and now too, a borrowing of mixed hues and tangibility. with so many minds running their own reels, how could there not be a stretch and continuum of time? tell me, as your eyes crinkle again against my awkward, sincere touch, how are we not --

Here at the End and oh the Sky Kalev Rudolph Though I know not to look at the astounding amount of you left in my palm, it still feels good.

It feels good to leave this body (I should love, I should love) and imagine our withered digits, decadent wrinkles and freckles and ears, all our lives tumbling into bed with the lights off and how we would sleep.

Would we work like a bruise?

Would we will it away like all thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s forgotten?

Cooing at memories until in typical fashion as always you go and I am left to breathe through my eyes

Untitled

Siddharth Gangrade Healing is immersing myself in the beauty of the natural world around me.

Sometimes I'm drawn to comfortable, nostalgic places, but often I'm forced to seek out the familiar in the unknown: faint scents of nature that bring me back to when I was younger, idyllic scenes painted by clouds in the sky, or old trees that stand tall through the harshest of storms, reminding me that I can too.

Untitled Sam Ku

Renewal Sam Ku I spent an endless summer sprouled atop rows of corn lake center finally feeling safe enough to meander through this sadness and walk away to strike at my flesh in hopes that in this gates down, wounds gaping state your resounding saccharine words would coat my skin then soak, understood, into my bones ready to release myself down to this grave and allow our sugary shield to seep into the ground like truth in this insulated town with the first spurt of growth from my detritus i will know that -this is spring.

Untitled Ely Ancheyta

ADVICE FOR BEING HEAVY Cailin Greenburg I know you don’t want to hold yourself up anymore and life seems ephemeral or you feel like a vibrating cable hanging from the sky and you think you might want to be still again but locating fear in your hands is a practice in living living is heavy, you can try to find quicksand you can learn to breathe into your reservations with being alive (there is space wherever you are)

ADVICE FOR BEING LIGHT Cailin Greenburg

Untitled Anonymous when my friend is mid breakdown i tell them we are all products of flux no one is whole or unchanging being damaged is a scam and humans are a process labels are tools not boxes so if vulnerability lends itself to growth then growth lies in the mercurial lacuna of neat definitions

Untitled Anonymous

life thrives in the expanse between translations so therefore i am blooming, not transgressive but transcendent an integral function of the universe.

Untitled

Salwa Meghjee â&#x20AC;&#x153;For (believe me) there are still flowers there, though wilted, there are still flowers."

- Robert Creeley, "The Late Comer"

[{(Subtext)}] Liz Gobbo

~Swipe to choose ur feelings filter~ [trauma] {gay feelings} (anxiety&depression) A week after I moved out, I matched with his friend on Tinder.

All of a sudden he was [several beers in] calling me at work, saying that I never loved him, [slurring,] spitting, “Live with your fucking decision.”

I could, he couldn’t.

[The last time we spoke before he died.]

When grief overwhelms me, I pull back from reality, Spend hours shut in my room [drinking and] redrawing my eyes, unfolding and fluttering my painted fan of dating profiles, horoscope charts, personality assessments. I can be {with} anyone (I want).

I flirt with strangers and learn the pertinent references To keep myself afloat, remotely dancing, passing Over the fingertips of 99+ women, genderqueers, and androgynes Within my locality. {I don’t want to see or be seen by straight people.} I trade music for art for touch for close (breath) I open and absorb oceans of media, become we, One of many of a queer virtual body, A collective of new loves and connections and old questions. We ask each other the time, when and where, is today the revolution?

But we are still awaiting our true revival, to feel reborn, not just rebranded. These young gay bones are heavy with empathy, so tired of false currencies and current events.

Resilience is resistance [{(is hard work.)}] At least, we are growing, and we are not alone.

Friends, counterfeits, country{wo}men I am (so worried and) so thirsty.

Who will talk to me truthfully, kiss me, care for us both (for us all), help me remember to love and drink water?

Untitled Katherine Sen During my younger years, I dealt with unexpected course of events that ultimately took a toll on my mental health. I felt so isolated, devastated, and lost, believing I had no one to talk to or had anywhere to go. What helped me cope in my later years was listening to music. Whenever I listened to my favorite artists and songs, nothing mattered. Nothing needed to make sense. I was so entranced in music that anything that I was concerned about disappeared. So here's me telling my younger self, "You're going through a lot right now, and you don't deserve to be hurt this badly. It will take time, but surely, your wounds will heal little by little. In the meantime, listen to some cool jams with me."

Ila Chaubey

Untitled Vivienne Lam

Stitch Me Back to Life Julie Bernardo

When You Can Rio Teixeira

Oasis Laura Ong

nami @ cal advocacy + supportÂ

www.facebook.com/ucberkeleynami namiucb@gmail.com