The Big Anxiety: Taking Care of Mental Health in Times of Crisis (Thinking in the World)

This book takes a creative approach in examining one of the biggest crises of our time: that of mental suffering, distress and anxiety. By bringing together essays and dialogues from thinkers and artists across a range of disciplines, it re-imagines approaches to crisis, support, and care. Amid growing recognition that mental health is not only the province of psychiatry and the health sector, but a concern for the whole community, the book opens up critical new ways of thinking about our internal lives and the forces that affect them. The book significantly advances the way we think about cultural responses to mental health and the understanding of the struggles of inner life. Featuring both theoretical and practical examples of the value of using imagination in response to trauma, anxiety, and depression, The Big Anxiety shows how creativity is not a luxury, but a means of survival. Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Figures 9 Contributors 11 Acknowledgements 18 Introduction 20 Chapter 1: The politics of experience – and the function of art in the expanded field of mental health 22 Part I: Suicide, felt experience and what works 34 Chapter 2: Why do art therapies work? 36 Chapter 3: Edge of the present: Mixed reality, suicidality and future thinking 47 Part II: Culture and experience 58 Chapter 4: Knowing from the inside 60 Chapter 5: Radical creativity: Breaking the cycles of trauma 74 Part III: Dialogue and embodied encounters 86 Chapter 6: The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland and Open Dialogue in the work of Ridiculusmus 88 Chapter 7: The Visit: A collaborative confabulation 99 Part IV: Designing for experience 110 Chapter 8: Facilitating environments: An arts-based psychosocial design approach 112 Chapter 9: I have a thing about tables 131 Part V: Resistance, racism and decolonization 142 Chapter 10: Narratives of resistance from indefinite detention: Manus Prison Theory and Nauru Imprisoned Exiles Collective 144 Chapter 11: Poetic solidarities 158 Part VI: Reparative action 170 Chapter 12: Designing reparations: Creative process as reparative practice 172 Chapter 13: EmbodiMap I: Trauma survival and refugee experience 185 Part VII: Thinking in action with creative resources after trauma 198 Chapter 14: Unnerved 200 Chapter 15: Wau-mananyi: The song on the wind 210 Chapter 16: EmbodiMap II: An auto-ethnography 216 Part VIII: Soundwork/earwork 228 Chapter 17: Held Down, Expanding: An exchange on trauma through acousmatic sound art practice 230 Chapter 18: Hold me in a circle of tender listening: Entangled encounters with women survivors from the Mental Health Testimony Project archive 242 Part IX: Lived experience, activism and survival 256 Chapter 19: Being together in a neurodiverse world: Exploring with Project Art Works 258 Chapter 20: Pathologize this 269 Chapter 21: Super-fast augmented anxiety 279 Index 294 "The Big Anxiety takes seriously the need to think creatively about one of the biggest crises of our time - that of mental suffering, distress and anxiety. By bringing together essays and dialogues from some of the top thinkers and artists in their fields to to creatively reimagine approaches to crisis, support and care. Amid growing recognition that mental health is not only the province of psychiatry and the health sector but a whole-of-community concern, this book opens up critical new ways of thinking about our internal lives and the forces that affect them. This project will significantly advance the way we think about cultural responses to mental health and the reframing of the struggles of the inner life more generally. It argues for the necessity of creativity and imagination with various theoretical and practical demonstrations of how creative imagination may be activated in response to trauma, anxiety, depression, suicidality. The Big Anxiety doesn't shy away from talking about creativity as more that just a luxury but as a means of survival."-- "This book takes a creative approach in examining of the biggest crises of our time: that of mental suffering, distress and anxiety. By bringing together essays and dialogues from thinkers and artists across a range of disciplines, it re-imagines approaches to crisis, support, and care. Amid growing recognition that mental health is not only the province of psychiatry and the health sector, but a concern for the whole community, the book opens up critical new ways of thinking about our internal lives and the forces that affect them. The book significantly advances the way we think about cultural responses to mental health and the understanding of the struggles of inner life. Featuring both theoretical and practical examples of the value of using imagination in response to trauma, anxiety, and depression, The Big Anxiety shows how creativity is not a luxury, but a means of survival"-- Provided by publisher