Protest Poster

It took me a ridiculously long time to finally decide on a topic that I felt I could somewhat accurately represent graphically. There are so many different issues that I am passionate about, but the one I really feel is the least represented and understood in society is mental illnesses, specifically depression.
The greatest issues surrounding most mental health is the idea that it's completely controllable, "all in your head." In his TEDtalk "Confessions of a Depressed Comic," Kevin Breel says "there's this pretty popular misconception that depression is just being sad when something in your life goes wrong...Real depression isn't being sad when something in your life goes wrong. Real depression is being sad when everything in your life is going right." Culturally, the more natural reaction to mental illnesses is a pushing away or feeling uncomfortable, like the person you previously thought was "normal" now has some kind of tumor or deformity to them now. Others push to just get over it already and move on. The discussion has been minimal, and it's always more of a shameful topic than other diseases. In some ways, it's more "normal" to suffer a physical disease like cancer, or the flu. But disease of the mind is largely ignored though vastly more dangerous.
However, mental health has become a more popular topic lately than it has previously. With media like the Oscar-nominated Silver Linings Playbook coming forward, a movie focused on the coping with mental illness, the issue is pushing more and more into the public eye. The movie focuses on a man with Bi-Polar disorder and a woman suffering from depression and a sex addiction and their ability to cope with, though not overcome, these mental illnesses. Wildly successful, the discussions began in an attempt to understand this more foreign concept.
Furthermore, with so many gun control issues lately, many people are turning to the source of the problem rather than blaming gun distribution. This could be a way of deflecting attention from the gun-specific issue, but the fact remains that many more people are beginning to recognize that mental health isn't simply something we can push under the table to discuss another day. Many have expressed that, had mental illness been something we addressed with more normalcy and social acceptance, many of the people who commit these shootings could have had these problems addressed and avoided the loss of lives. The push to recognize it as a serious and valid issue has become stronger.
For class we watched a TEDtalk about a woman from Nigeria learning to become strong in her cultural identity. She grew up on English literature, and then proceeded to write in a similar way. She warned against the "single story" that is so popular in today's society, and I felt the concept was especially powerful in regards to mental health. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spoke of her adopted point of view, of playing in the snow and eating apples, something she learned through the popular culture in her media. Similarly, much of the depression discussion is based on a single point of view of the solvability of the problem. I feel this "single story" mentality of those who are happy now or just made better with positivity or something is often pushed forward than that of the stark reality of an uncontrollable mental problem.
I have personally been on the receiving end of the social stigma regarding depression. I have struggled with it for a long time and am only recently recognizing how many of my personal habits are formed to compensate for or are a result of this. I have a hard time accepting that it's not something you "get over" or move past one day, and that mentality has hindered me frequently. It's not something I can will away, though there I feel like it is a great weakness for me and hard to accept. My attitude toward it, and that of many others, is a result of the societal stigma's I'm addressing in my poster. I chose depression as a specific mental illness especially because of my personal relation to the topic. Often, especially in Mormon culture, we're given the happy, shiny version of the world. We convert others because we're just so happy. We love Disney ideals and being sunshine and daisies. I wanted to contrast that mentality with the popular Peter Pan from Disney, and one song in particular- "You Can Fly." I felt the juxtaposition of this simple solution of thinking "any happy little thought" was particularly powerful with the struggle of depression. I wanted to represent society with the colorful Peter, and contrast it with the bleakness of depression to show the struggle of the oversimplification of this huge social issue.


For my social media feedback, I didn't get too much commentary on the content of my ad, more about how the graphic design wasn't good. However, I posted it in my tumblr, and I was surprised how many reblogs and favorites I got. However, most of the people who did reblog or favorite had kind of creepy blogs that were more glorifying depression, so I'm not convinced my message came across, or if some people are just creepy.