Loyola University recently hosted an exhibit on the works of William Utermohlen, an artist who documented his battle with Alzheimer’s disease through self-portraits over a…
Gustave Courbet’s “The Desperate Man” is a self-portrait that alludes to a connection between artistic genius and psychological distress, a common theme in the Romantic…
‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’ is an etching by painter Francisco Goya in 1799 of the artist sleeping while nightmarish creatures fly above him….
The poem ‘Requiem’ by Anna Akhmatova documents the trauma and suffering of the Russian people under Joseph Stalin. The poem was conceived as she waited…
For the past six years, Melissa Spitz of St. Louis, Missouri has been using photography to illustrate her mother’s experience with mental illness, referring to…
In an attempt to shed the stigma of mental illness and inform an uninformed public, an exhibition in China showcased artwork by individuals struggling with…
Dan Roman uses a powerful metaphor of an ever-present roommate to describe his painful experience with depression. His recitation of this poem is a moving…
Andrea Gibson is a spoken word artist and activist who writes with intense passion about mental illness, bullying, and social tragedy. In her award-winning poem,…
For the last 15 years of his life, Martin Ramirez (1895-1963) was hospitalized at the DeWitt State Hospital in Northern California with a diagnosis of…
During the Romantic age, Theodore Gericault created portraits of patients of his friend Dr. Etienne-Jean Georget. In this piece, he painted a “woman addicted to…
