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.
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
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.
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
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.
To mark the ongoing industrial action, we revisit Felicity Callard’s article (orginally published on The Polyphony in November 2019) on labour, exhaustion, and the physical and institutional bodies engaged in the present dispute.
Tehseen Noorani reviews Wiremu NiaNia, Allister Bush and David Epston’s Collaborative and Indigenous Mental Health Therapy: Tātaihono – Stories of Māori Healing and Psychiatry (Routledge, 2017). Māori cultural therapist Wiremu NiaNia and Pākehā [settler of European
Beata Gubacsi reflects on Psychtech 2019: Mental Health and Digital Technology conference Previous posts on Medical Humanities 2.0 have addressed the increasing interest in gaming and mental health as well as speculating possible trajectories
Guest author Sachin Shah from Gaming the Mind shares his insights on how EGX, the largest annual gaming event in the UK, promotes mental health awareness. EGX is described as the UK’s biggest video
Steve Earl once famously said, “Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that” (McGee, The Guardian, 2008).
