This was our final psychology project and it involved creating a project of our choice to help display how stigma works and how it can be stopped, as well as how it pertains to mental health. For this project I created two different posters, each with a different message. The first poster I created from scratch and it represents what stigma is and how mental health is seen by society today. It shows to people facing each other, one is clearly physically injured, bandaged and bleeding. The person facing them has a mental illness, there is no indication of this mental illness from simply looking that them. The physically injured one is receiving comments from others saying “That looks awful, what happened?” and “Are you okay? Do you need anything?” The people saying this can clearly see someone is wrong and are trying to help. The mentally ill person is receiving comments that aren’t as nice or helpful they read: “What’s your excuse this time” and “Stop being sad, get over it.” They are saying this because they don’t understand what is happening inside their head, they can’t see anything obviously wrong with them, so they assume nothing is. At the bottom of the page there is a line in big bolded letters saying “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it's not there.” I wrote this because our society has formed mental health in sort fo this buddle where you know when something is up, and if you don’t then they must be faking it to get out of something. Below all of that is a helpline and website for anyone who is struggling or knows someone who is. This represents stigma clearly as it is showing both sides to the story and the outcomes of them. The hope is to reach anyone who needs help or just wants to talk, posters this these can affect a large amount of people in this community because what they see on social media isn’t always right and it is glorifying mental illness when it should be talked about in a way so they can get help. This poster can go up around the school, so everyone can see it and understand that they aren’t alone and that there is help out there.
The second poster I created was also made from scratch with a few images from the internet to help. I put the definition of mental illness at the top of the page with brain scans below it. The brain scans were of a normal brain, a brain with depression, a brain with anxiety, and a brain with schizophrenia. I did this so that people could see that there is something noticeable about mental illness, you just have to look a little closer. Underneath that I put a thinking cloud with what people with mental illness get told to often, an explain of those are: “It’s all in your head”, “If you can’t see it, it’s not real”, “You’re just seeking attention”, “It’s not real”, “Your just imagining it”. These are what people with mental illness’ are hearing because our society has put this cloud saying that its not real until you’re in the hospital. Below the cloud is bold is “You wouldn’t tell someone with cancer to just get over it”, and that is true, you can’t see the cancer, but you know its there, you know the person is suffering and dying. It's the same with mental health, you can’t see it, yet people still choose to say its not real. This poster will hopefully reach a lot of people not just around the school, but in the community. It shows that you can actually see mental illness’ and you shouldn’t dismiss them the first chance you get. Our society has ignored mental health for a long time and they still aren’t grasping the whole concept. Posters like these and people who understand mental health and its effects should be spreading world wide to make sure everyone knows and understands it. More of what society needs to understand: Having a mental illness shouldn’t be your definition, you are always a person first. When you were 8 and broke your arm, everyone could see that you have an injury and are broken and they tell you to get better soon and hope you feel alright. But then when you have a mental illness and it’s not visible from the outside everyone who was helping you before, now tell you to get over it, suck it up, everyone gets sad sometimes and other people have it worse. The thing they don’t understand and what more people need too is that you CAN be broken without breaking a bone, you CAN require medical help without without a physical injury. You are NOT just asking for attention, you are NOT your illness, and you are NOT less of a person because of your mental illness. You are a person, who has a chemical imbalance in the brain. And no amount of stigma or discrimination towards mental health can take that away from you. Images cited: Cuete, D. (n.d.). Radiopaedia [Normal CT brain]. Retrieved June 18, 2018, from https://images.radiopaedia.org/images/4170261/c5d7c3ed6c7fe53e59c2dd902e44b9_big_gallery.jpg Herheartherhome [Digital image]. (n.d.). Retrieved June 18, 2018, from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/5d/26/0a5d26782a4ece395086f17b74844cde.png Mayo Clinic [Digital image]. (n.d.). Retrieved June 18, 2018, from https://www.mayoclinic.org/-/media/kcms/gbs/patient-consumer/images/2017/05/15/20/19/c7_pet_depression-8col.ashx MedImaging [Digital image]. (2016, December 22). Retrieved June 18, 2018, from https://globetechcdn.com/medicalimaging/images/stories/articles/article_images/2016-12-22/DJB-740.jpg
1 Comment
This project allowed us to analyze the stress in our life and how we typically cope with our stressors by recording our stress for a couples days. It provided us with insight into what stressors are frequent in our life and better ways to deal with them. May 28 - day
Starting thinking about exams and how they are coming up soon. Analysis:
May 30 - all day Have someone close to me pass away suddenly and missing important school days to fly out. Analysis:
June 2 - night Having to choose between two different soccer teams to play for next season Analysis:
June 3 - night Thinking about/choosing my school schedule for next year Analysis:
June 4 - all day into night Having to book my flight home the night before exams Analysis:
June 8 - night Work - lifeguarding, especially when its busy Analysis:
After analyzing my stress diary, I can notice a few similarities between the events that cause stress and the methods I use to help. For starters, I stress a lot about future events and school. They each make me uneasy, nervous and anxious. A lot of them also seem to involve something that could never even occur or some unknown variable, such as work, I don’t know what exactly is going to happen and I think that is the scary part, because as humans we feel the need to know everything that is going to happen all the time. Another is choosing my schedule for next year, I was super stressed out because it didn’t all work with everything, and when I finally got it to work that still might not be what I end up with. I also noticed that events that might usually be eustressful aren’t now, a factor to that is probably the stress built on top of that, for instance my flight home, I wouldn’t find stressful at all, but because it is the night before exams and I am already stressed about those, it adds up and onto my stress. It seems that I don’t have any long lasting stress at the moment (which I am grateful for), but I do keep stressing about the future which depending on how far out it is can become long lasting. It seems that I use the same types of coping methods a lot, for example I use support groups for a lot of my stress’ and maybe that’s why I don’t have that many long lasting or many truly stressful events, because I know that I will always have my friends and they make me feel better, even before the stress has started. Another method that came up a lot was “controlling stressful situations” and “training”, I think “training” comes up because I know that the more I train the better I’ll get and then the less stress I’ll have. For “controlling stressful situations” comes up because I feel that I am in more control of my emotions then they are of me, so if I can control myself and my emotions, then my stress will decrease. Another major cause for my stress that doesn’t really show up in my stress diary is procrastination, I will procrastination until I know longer have time (which I know is bad, but it's just a habit) and then have all this stress from putting it off, piled one me for a week. Although I get stressed and sometimes it gets bad, I always think that I have been good at controlling it and overcoming whatever it was and getting what needed to be done, done. After analyzing and keeping up with my stress diary, I don’t think it has helped me have less stressors in my life, but it definitely has helped monitor them. It has also helped in realizing how I cope with stress and what method is best for what situation and how to be better in the future. For example, I noticed that for a lot of my stress all I need is to be around my friends and just talk to someone. Overall, I feel that I now have a better sense of what causes my stress’ and how to lower or overcome them. This project has also given my insight on my day to day life and what happens in it. 1) Can enough stress create a mental health disorder?
2) What does it take for society to get a better grasp on mental health? 3) What would a stress diary for me look like 10 years from now? |