Mental Health Final Project

     When it comes to sociopolitical topics, one of the topics that stood out to me is mental health awareness. When it comes to mental health, many people who do not go through the brief moments of depression, anxiety, or even aggression, many people usually say ' Isn't depression a fancy word for feeling sad?' This is far from the truth because many people experience depression, anxiety, and many other emotions, some of these sadly, ending with a person taking their own life due to losing the battle to their own internal demons. For example, a study from 2022 shows that "In 2019, just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 19.86% of adults experienced a mental illness, equivalent to nearly 50 million Americans."(mhanational.org). Fifty million Americans experience a mental illness, oftentimes their mental illness is often brushed off or seen as something that simply goes away over time. It is not just adults, but it is also the youth as well. For instance, the same website says, "15.08% of youth experienced a major depressive episode in the past year, a 1.24% increase from last year's dataset. In the bottom-ranked states, up to 19% of youth ages 12-17 experienced major depression", (mhanational.org). This reminds me of the group of artists, activists, and debaters in the Interventionalists book in one of the chapters, who inspired my project due to how they would meet and discuss issues revolving around the community. Another artist that influenced me was Vincent van Gogh because he himself was also dealing with his own mental illness, along with the artist Tracey Emin, who created a piece titled, "My Bed" which is a piece illustrating the result of four days Emin spent suffering from suicidal depression. 

Tracey Emin, "My Bed"

One way these mental illnesses can be helped is if not just students but people outside of the education field have a way to vent and relieve themself of their mental illnesses by programs creating a way for people to speak their minds through the methods of art. For a person who has anxiety and has moments where I want to be alone myself, a method I always use to help myself is to draw. Not with a particular topic in mind but just letting my pencil move along my canvas, usually after a session, I feel more at ease compared to before I began to draw. Below is a piece of art that I drew illustrating that most times, it is important to turn off the negativity and to draw what's on your mind or draw in order to relax the brain and thoughts from becoming overwhelming. 

https://www.mhanational.org/issues/state-mental-health-america 

https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-enduring-connection-between-art-and-mental-health 

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression 

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/mental-health-disorder-statistics 

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-my-bed-l03662