Behind the Masks: Mental Health, Marginalisation and COVID-19
Rebecca Walker and Jo Vearey discuss how COVID-19 is impacting mental health and existing inequalities in South Africa
Take It Back: Zines, Madness and Mental Health
Lilith Cooper introduces Take It Back, a participatory zine making project about madness and mental health
Review of ‘Psychoanalysis for the People: Free Clinics and the Social Mission of Psychoanalysis’
Ana Minozzo reviews the first edition of an international online conference that explored socially engaged psychoanalytic practices from across the world. The event was hosted by the Freud Museum in London during the weekend
Filtering Noisy Advice during Lockdown
Alix Gallagher shares a 2021 lockdown experience, studying at home while filtering the noise from increasing amounts of advice.
Making Space for Self-Harm
Introducing the make space project, a user-led initiative dedicate to thinking more critically and care-fully about self-harm. Make space is a user-led initiative creating spaces for more courageous, nuanced, and generous conversations about self-harm.
Sculpting Anxious Bodies
How is the relationship between private illness and public spectacle negotiated within the context of contemporary art? Poet Alice Hill Woods and artist Emelia Kerr Beale explore how fine art practices can reshape our engagement with, and understanding of, mental health issues.
Reload last saved game: mental health, video gaming and the fantastic in Netflix’s “Russian Doll” (2019)
Self-isolating, Beata Gubacsi re-watched Russian Doll and caught a few things she missed the first time. (The blog post contains spoilers and mentions suicide.) As we are dealing with the severe disruption of our
Finding A Medieval Friend
In these difficult times, many are struggling to engage with academic work. The global hardship of this pandemic— especially for vulnerable people such as the homeless, those with disabilities, those with unsafe home environments, and also because of institutional variance in how far employees are being cared for— seems to necessitate an explicitly personal approach to any writing that happens during this time.
‘Working with Video Gamers and Games in Therapy’: Book Review
Beata Gubacsi reviews Anthony M. Bean’s Working with Video Gamers and Games in Therapy (Routledge, 2018). Anthony M. Bean, as “psychologically minded video gamer” (6), reflects on the disparity between, on one hand, the
#CompulsiveCharcoal
Liz Atkin is a visual artist, educator, and mental health advocate. Her work, which has recently been acquired by Wellcome Collection, explores the lived experience of compulsive skin-picking, a body-focused repetitive behaviour disorder. Fiona Johnstone, visual culture editor at The Polyphony, visited Atkin in her studio in south London.