I have just read an extract from Emma Forrest’s book Your Voice in My Head in yesterday’s Guardian http://bit.ly/dKlamU. The book is published by Bloomsbury on 17th of Jan and gives an account of this successful female journalist’s battle with depression.
What struck me immediately about this article is the wistful glamour that the author effortlessly attaches to her illness. Accounts of bulimia and suicide take place against a backdrop of quirky downtown New York and relationships with high profile film stars. The accompanying image depicts a beautiful young woman in a gorgeous yellow dress, her serious facial expression subtly alluding to the strain that her suicidal depression and self harm have caused her.
It seems to me that public representations of depression often take on this kind of glamorous form, especially when it comes to depression in women. Books like Shoot the Damn Dog written by Sally Brampton (former editor of Vogue) are often set against a background of wealth and resources that make the passage from symptom to diagnosis, treatment and cure a little more fluid. Sally Brampton says at one point toward the end of her book “money is there to be spent,” a phrase that affirms her assured capability to pay for therapy in order to overcome her (admittedly horrendous) symptoms. I can’t help question how this very one sided depiction of depression in women, might impact on the public’s perception of mental health issues.
In August 2010 Janet Street Porter published an horrendously foolish article in the Daily Mail, which leveled the claim that depression was the new trendy illness in rich women. http://bit.ly/atC8MA Her claims included the assertion that women from poor backgrounds are simply too preoccupied with poverty and overwork to allow the word depression to enter their vocabulary. Only rich women, she concluded, have time to be depressed.
While I utterly refute Porter’s claims and believe depression to be a serious health issue, her article does seem symptomatic of the current popular discourse around depression. We hear multitudes about depression survivors like Emma Forrest who battle with the depressive mindset in pretty dresses and high heals. Yet we hear considerably less about underprivileged women who bring up children in tiny council houses and are never diagnosed as depressives because they have too many other health and life issues to contend with first.
I’m very excited about the new direction that I have identified for my MA research and how I might be able to evidence some other platform for public perceptions of mental health issues, that oppose this glamorous female surviver model. My decision to look at artists making alternative archives of mental health symptoms, allows me to think about how other perspectives might be illuminated for a public audience. Its curious how the issue of gender looms large here and that I am proposing to focus on the experiences of men. I know that I people keep questioning the gender aspect of my proposal, but somehow the singular feminine perspective evidenced in books like Emma Forrest’s continue to serve as testimony to its relevance.
I’ve decided to propel myself into 2011 on a wave of optimism. This is based on the belief that it must be time for things to get a bit better. The past two or three years seem to have been Yin years, dominated by deep dark shadows, solitude and passivity. This year is going to be a year of Yang, characterized by light, heat and creativity. Obviously its all a part of Taoist philosophy that the two elements have to intermingle in order for life to exist. But in essence I think I need to become more dragon than tiger in 2011…. and start breathing a bit more fire.
I went for my interview at the London Consortium yesterday. As an interview performance it certainly wasn’t perfect, but I do feel that I at least represented myself as an interesting, proactive and enthusiastic candidate. The interviewers (the amazing Steven Conner http://bit.ly/f8zCpy and his colleague Sarah) threw some incredibly interesting questions at me, including: can the pathology of the internet be seen as exclusively male? And what about the connections between women and the internet? It really does seem to be the gender issue that people pull out as the flaw in my proposal, so I perhaps have to reconsider or remove this aspect? My recent thoughts on archiving symptoms don’t necessarily deal with gender anyway, so perhaps this aspect will fall away naturally.
Yesterday I stumbled across this article in the Guardian http://bit.ly/fQQelY. I wish I had seen it prior to my interview as it certainly would have been something to flag up. Its the story of Simone Black who posted a facebook status update on Christmas Day saying “Took all my pills, be dead soon, bye bye everyone.” Its an online suicide note in ten words and its utterly chilling, especially given that out of Simone’s 1,048 facebook friends, not one stepped away from their computer to go and see if she was still alive. She was found dead later that evening.
I find it interesting to consider the motives of such a public cry for help. Clearly Simone didn’t have anyone around her that she could turn to, so she posted on facebook in order to feel as if somebody was listening. The problem is that her post prompted nothing but bickering and abuse among those who did respond with a comment. Maybe her facebook friends were just apathetic? Maybe the words didn’t even seem real to them and were taken as an idle threat? Sometimes there is just no way of knowing the sentiments behind a person’s posts if you can’t read the subtleties of speech and mannerisms. Either way, I do believe that one of the driving forces behind this kind of internet suicide is the need to validate an individual life by sensationalizing it’s destruction. Given that most people who commit suicide tend to think that their lives are meaningless, self publication offers the opportunity to elevate self importance and to make a bigger impact with one’s decision to self destruct. I also think its about the perpetrator making others feel guilty and about spreading a general sense of futility……
Wahhhhh stop press I just got an exciting email from the London Consortium…. check out the image to your right……. I got in!!! Please excuse me while I stop writing intelligent and interesting things and break out into a one hour victory dance. Shimmy shake!!
Sorry dear readers, what an emotional roller coaster of a blog post! Yikes
So it appears that I have taken a sabbatical from my blog! Thats a shame as its been an eventful month or two. As ever my non productivity has correlated with a very minor heartache (which I have made major because histrionics are a fundamental part of my personality.) But now thats over I’m sure I will regain my focus and start churning out some more writing as I have not produced nearly enough recently.
Two weeks ago I went to London and had an initial meeting about my MA application with Lisa Blackman at Goldsmiths. I warmed instantly to Lisa and feel that she will make a really great supervisor for someone like me who tends to need a lot of encouragement! Lisa said she is interested in supervising me, but that the proposal needs some work. I took this quite well as I can also see lots of room for improvement. I think the bad news is that it needs a total rewrite… implying that January is going to be a busy month for yours truly! I’ve been out of academia for the past five years so its not surprising that I need some pointers from Lisa to get my application really on track. I have been asked to consider issues around Affect, which has been a really trendy topic academically this year. Lisa also suggested I think about archives and how artists are producing alternative archives of mental health symptoms, particularly in performance. I find this second point really interesting as it tallies with some of my fascinations around the role of social media and how individuals use these media to create their own personal archives, particularly around things like internet suicides. These alternative archives can be viewed as a counterpoint to conventional archives of mental health symptoms such as medical records created by doctors and hospitals. It allows the patient to archive and articulate independently outside of mainstream medicine and also brings mental health symptoms to a more public audience. Lots of potential to consider…..
I’m off to London for another interview at The London Consortium on Thursday. I am more nervous about this one as it will be more formal, but I have earmarked the next two days for reading and pondering….
Today however, I have to go to town and return a £200 pair of shoes (I clearly can’t afford) that I decided to buy myself as conciliation for the afore mentioned minor heartache. Does anyone else find it utterly bizarre how much a little stirring of the loins can cloud one’s judgement? Or maybe I’m just too sensitive?
