Mental health - Corpus

Promises: Mental Health in crisis

19 June 2017 2 Comments

Tracey Holden

In New Zealand, a total of 36,684 referrals were made for people needing mental health crisis assessment during the 2015-16 financial year. Nearly 13,000 referrals were made for people needing an overnight stay – some patients being referred multiple times.

Yet there are just 590 beds in acute mental health wards nationwide for people in crisis.

Recently I felt compelled to sign a petition on actionstation.org.nz calling for a National Inquiry into Mental Health Services. Up until then I had been like the silent majority of New Zealanders who have glossed over stories about how our mental health services are in crisis.

Solidarity comes when our stories align.

Pursuing darkness: musing on depression and creativity

19 June 2017 1 Comment

Heather Bauchop

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk’s flight
on the empty sky.”

I have always loved writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s opening to her novel A Wizard of Earthsea. It is the perfect epitaph. In these five lines is the enormity of life and both the vitality and emptiness of existence. Le Guin confronts the value of turning to life’s turmoil and recognising that only in each imperfect moment are we alive. Thinking about Le Guin’s trilogy and the meaning we attribute to our lives, I wondered about my life and the intersection of meaning, voice and truth.

When I was 25 I was diagnosed with ‘long-standing dysthymic disorder’ (also called dysthymia – a beautiful word meaning ‘ill-humoured’ that now wears the tedious label ‘Persistent Depressive Disorder’). I was (perversely) quite happy about this – this wasn’t depression, but a persistent low mood. The diagnosis seemed less dramatic, like being in a valley rather than at the bottom of a pit. The low mood (the low mood – something distanced from the self) responded to Prozac – a new drug at the time, requiring a $200 visit to a psychiatrist to authorise the prescription. It is not until recently I realised that such a diagnosis could be a life sentence, indeed a sentence I’ve been serving out for twenty-five years.

Concerning anxiety: art meets neuroscience

5 December 2016 Leave a Comment

Brian Hyland in conversation with artist (& occasional poet) Mike O’Kane

In the corner of my office, I have a sculpture on loan from artist Mike O’Kane. It confronts me every day with a wonderful juxtaposition of the themes of my work in neuroscience: how the brain works, and the personal experience of conditions that strike to the sense of self and the equilibrium of mood and emotion. An extremely prevalent example is anxiety disorder. Many of us have either personally experienced this, or know of someone who has.

Mike built the sculptural piece in response to a family member’s experience of anxiety with panic attacks, to explore the possibility of achieving a therapeutic in(ter)vention through art. [Read more…] about Concerning anxiety: art meets neuroscience

Waves from a storm: thoughts on suicide

10 October 2016 Leave a Comment

Dr Jill McIlraith

For a doctor, suicide of a patient interrupts the therapeutic relationship like no other death. There is no recovery, no chance to rescue the unique partnership of the doctor and that patient: only a cauldron of questions and emotions.

Depression: back from the dead and celebrating life

12 September 2016 1 Comment

Mark Thomas

Like a shorter, slower version of the great All Black John Kirwan, I have decided to speak up about depression. My life is fantastic and I get immense pleasure from my love of sport, travel and the amazing people around me. But here’s a simple statement of medical fact: I have experienced major episodes of clinical depression since the age of 18. I don’t know how that works, how the same mind that allows me to drink in life like an intoxicating nectar can also turn dog on me and drag me to the depths of emotional hell, but that is the truth of it. I do know that depression can afflict anyone, regardless of how good or seemingly enviable their life is, just as cancer, heart disease or any other illness can strike anybody, regardless of how happy, famous or wealthy they are.

Creative Spaces in the Community: ‘Artsenta: the First 30 Years’

22 August 2016 3 Comments

Barbara Brookes

Artsenta: the First 30 Years by Kath Beattie

We are often oblivious to the health initiatives taking place in our communities. This came home to me forcefully while reading the recently published history of Artsenta, a Dunedin-based supportive art studio which started life at Cherry Farm Psychiatric Hospital in the 1980s. Artsenta was the initiative of Dr Julia Aranui-Faed, and grounded in her belief that creativity is integral to well-being. Artsenta: the First 30 Years charts the evolution of this idea in practice, an idea whose philosophy is well-expressed by long-time Artsenta staff member Heather Martin:

… to focus on art and the well bit inside everyone”. [Read more…] about Creative Spaces in the Community: ‘Artsenta: the First 30 Years’