OUIL402 PPP - How Illustrations on Social media are changing the conversation on Mental Health

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/35564616/mental-health-week-how-drawings-on-social-media-are-changing-the-conversation

I found this article at some point last week while just scrolling through Facebook. I found it really interesting to hear about how Illustration was having an impact on how people talk about and view mental health and how this is helping fight the stigma that surrounds it.
Mental Health is a very important subject to me, one that affects my life daily and that has repeatedly affected friends and family around me at various stages in my life. This article combined my passion for Illustration with a subject very close to me and got me thinking more on how illustration can be used to make a difference.

Sylvie Reuter

There were a few pieces of illustration in the article that i found quite striking, this being the first. Though not much was said by the illustrator about the piece I found it ridiculously easy to be able to understand this piece and the feelings that it provokes. I struggle to find the words to explain how i feel sometimes, and I've seen other pieces of work that have discussed mental health but this is one that I completely 100% get. This is exactly how it feels and it is so much easier to look at this and understand and to show people this and have them understand than it is to talk about things. 

Rubyetc

I've followed Ruby's work for a while now, her simple, gestural cartoons have an honesty to them as well as a humour. In the article, Ruby says her drawing aim is to 'talk about it in a way thats honest. Theres a lot of imagery and writing out there that's very positivity centred and not enough credence is given to the distress of it'. I completely agree with whats she saying here. It's always nice to see imagery or text that promotes positivity and inner strength and what not but there really doesn't seem to be as much out there that just tackles mental illness head on. 

Lauren Reis

Lauren Reis created a character named 'Selfie' after managing her own mental illness and found that a lot of people were reacting to her work and seeing parts of themselves in 'Selfie'. This really struck me, after just finishing a brief based around character design suddenly everything fell into place. Characters like 'Selfie', with no specified gender, no specified style or identity are relatable to people across all levels. People can look at this and say 'yes, that is exactly how I'm feeling' no matter what ethnicity, gender or class levels they come from.

I'm not entirely sure what point I'm trying to get at or why exactly i decided to post it to my blog but it just felt important to me, the article explains everything a lot better, but I just thought I'd keep this on here for future reference, or something like that.