mental health

Antidepressant Monoprints

Personal Projects, Work in Progress

I made these monoprints back at the beginning of lockdown, to open up a discussion about the side effects of antidepressant medications, based on my own personal experiences with Fluoxetine, Citalopram, and Venlafaxine. I finally got round to scanning them and doing minor Photoshop edits (a little bit of resizing).

These are not all the possible side effects of these medications and aren’t necessarily the worst, but they are some of the ones that I have struggled with the most- and some of which I didn’t actually realise were side effects of my medication until I did further research. I would potentially like to expand this into a zine for people who are considering antidepressants- often medication is forced onto patients instead of therapy or delving into the reasons why people are feeling the way they are, and in a short 10-20 minute doctors appointment we are assessed (sometimes wrongly) as having depression and are given a prescription with very little explanation as to why they are being prescribed and the affects they can have on your body and mind. I personally have found medication helpful, but I think people need to know the full facts before deciding whether or not to take something. I am also considering redoing the monoprints over the top of the paper inserts that come with the medication detailing the side effects as a development, as I see these very much as a starting point.

BPD & ME

Personal Projects
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I finally dug up the file for the BPD Zine I made last year and saved it as a digital version. If you have recently been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) also known as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD), know someone who has been, or would just like to learn more about the disorder please feel free to read and share this with anyone else who might need it. Bear in mind that no one’s experiences with BPD will be identical and this is based on my own personal experiences.

Antidepressants Monoprints and Crit with Babeworld3000

Personal Projects

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I’ve made myself a little DIY monoprint set up for my room consisting of a sheet of perspex and a roller and ink from a home linocut kit. The above photos show the set up and the process for the series I made about 2 months ago (I was going to wait until I had scans to upload but I decided to just upload the photos from my phone as I want to document what I’m doing regardless). I knew I wanted to write, but with monoprinting your prints come out reversed and I am rubbish at writing backwards, so I wrote out each thing on tracing paper first which I then flipped and placed on top of the sheet of paper I was printing onto, so that I could trace the backwards writing- meaning the prints were the right way.

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The series consists of 13 prints- 3 are the names of the 3 antidepressants I have taken (one of which I am currently taking), and then 10 of the side effects I have experienced from these medications.

I made this as I have just recently switched antidepressants and am now on the third kind I have tried since I first started taking them aged 17, and I wanted to bring attention to some of the side effects that particularly effect me. Some of these side effects I didn’t even realise I was experiencing because of my medication- for instance the increased sensitivity to sunlight one- I used to tan really well and it took a lot of exposure to the sun for me to burn, but over the years this has changed and I now burn very easily and become easily fatigued if I spend too long in the sun. I also get dehydrated faster when it’s hot and it was only last summer that I read somewhere that it is a common side effect of long term antidepressant use. I think it’s really important to discuss relying on medication to be able to function; there is a lot of stigma still particularly towards those who take medication for mental health issues, a lot of misinformation, and a lot of jargon.

I was stuck on what to do next with this series of prints, so I put them aside for over a month to figure out where I wanted to go with it, and then saw a few days ago that Babeworld3000 are doing bi monthly zoom call crits and a reading group, so I figured joining the crit would be a good way to get feedback on this work. They gave me some really good stuff to work with and I enjoyed being able to feedback to others- it was something I really missed from uni!

I’m going to add the notes that the peeps who run Babeworld3000 made during the call once they email them out, but here are the things I jotted down just after my turn:

  • Make it into a zine- educational (one of the people who runs Babeworld3000 also took part in the exhibition I was in with WANK Collective last year and really liked the zines I displayed- she suggested making these into a zine and others agreed)
  • liked that it’s in my own language, more accessible, feels more real, honest
  • Printing onto the side effects leaflets?
  • Side effects bingo- everyone who has also taken these kinds of meds really connected with it and we joked about creating a “side effects bingo” which could be something fun on it’s own or as part of a zine
  • liked the medium
  • side effects bunting

To Do:

  • add notes from Babeworld3000 once they are emailed out
  • consider how to turn the prints into a zine- do I want to monoprint the whole zine, is this feasible? Or do I want to scan them in and create the zine digitally?
  • decide what else could go in the zine/what I want on the front and back covers, what size, is it going to be stapled, hand stitched, or just folded?
  • Take better photos or scan the prints in for portfolio

EDIT: CRIT NOTES FROM BABEWORLD3000:

Kat

  • Monoprint series for feedback
  • How to show? Maybe zines
  • Your past zines could be shared with a zine made from these new prints in sort of a library. 
  • All these perspectives on your own experience shows how multifaceted you are
  • The prints are extremely relatable with the whole group raising hands or saying “same” 
  • The bingo sheet at the back of the zine is an extension of this – like Instagram bingos where we can share parts of ourselves in a humorous and relatable way
  • The zine format is accessible and flips the whole doctors pamphlet thing on its head 
  • print on the list of side effects but using an accessible code of language – colloquial and loaded language.

MENTAL: An Exhibition Exploring Mental Health

Assessment, Exhibitions, Group Project, Personal Projects, UNIT 2

 

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The “BPD and Me” zine I made was made specifically for the exhibition I organized and put together for my society, The Mentally Chill Society.

As part of this I had to:

  • find out if there was interest from members of the society
  • find out what spaces were available at UAL for student exhibitions, then apply for the space (a very long application form was involved)
  • I had to attend a meeting to learn the do’s and don’ts of the space we were allotted- including the health and safety stuff
  • I then got a committee of society members together, they helped me to write the open call brief asking society members to submit work dealing with the topic of mental health, and more specifically their own experiences of it
  • Shridula put together the poster which I emailed out to society members and also posted and shared on social media
  • we then went through the submissions as a committee and contacted everyone who was successful
  • I then had to fill out a risk assessment
  • One of the members, Carmella, designed the poster, which I then took elements from to design the sheet with everyone’s names, courses, and descriptions of their work on for the exhibition
  • I also filled in an application form for additional funding from the Student Union to cover printing costs, costs of nails/tape/ect, alcohol and other drinks for the private view, ect
  • It was a real struggle to get everyone into the space to put their work over the two days we had to install but I managed, and we got everyone’s work hung!
  • There was a lot of problem solving involved- for example we realized too late that the labels were going to be too expensive, so we got number stickers for everyone’s work, and then had the sheet with all the info on it for people to take
  • the private view went really well and I got lots of positive feedback on the curation and for putting it together!
  • this was my first time organizing an exhibition completely from scratch, and my first time curating an exhibition- I learnt a lot about working with larger groups of people, giving up control to delegate tasks, and how to hang work that is vastly different in a way that works and shows everyone’s work in the best way

BPD & Me Zine

Exhibitions, Personal Projects, Photographs, UNIT 2

As part of an exhibition I organised for my society, The Mentally Chill Society, I decided to make a short zine exploring my experiences with Borderline Personality Disorder, which I was diagnosed with around two years ago.
I started by writing down the NHS definition, the causes, and the four main criteria for diagnosis, and began thinking about how they affected me, personally. I then made some notes, shown below, of objects/imagery I might want to use. It was at this point I decided I wanted to create the initial imagery for the zine on the photocopier, as I wanted it to look and feel handmade and erratic.
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I spent about a day in the learning zone, playing around with the various objects I collected from my room on the photocopier, including- fast food packaging, smoking apparatus, my old Barbie doll, condoms, anti depressant packaging, coloured paper, patterned paper bags, doll parts, and photos of myself. These were all things I felt represented different aspects of both myself and more specifically my personality disorder. Once I had the imagery I then used various pens and crayons to create the text and some other parts (such as the mood wheel) which I then added. The original double page spreads were A3 (so once folded it would have been A4) as I prefer to work larger then scale down my work in the next stage, for better quality. The finished zine was printed on A4 paper and folded down to A5.

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The next stage was to scan the pages so that I could edit them digitally on Indesign for printing, as shown below.

I printed a proof in black and white first to check that everything was in the right place, before moving on to printing in colour.

I then hand bound the book, using waxed thread for book binding, a bone folder, needle and awl, to make the holes.

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The photos above are of the Zine in the MENTAL exhibition that I organised, and set up, which I will post about shortly.