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 Karleen Gwinner
Faculty of Health, QUT
Thesis Title: "Diagnosed Artist" What is the understanding of "artist" held by a person diagnosed with mental illness: does their understanding impact on their notions of recovery and their role in the community?
Current Thesis Abstract: I propose a study to address the impact of visual arts as a tool in recovery and as an agent of social change. A key aim of arts and mental health projects should be to overcome barriers of social integration. My objective will be to explore the concept of "artist" held by a person diagnosed with a mental illness.
I intend to do this by providing an account of the experiences of art practice, held a small number of people diagnosed with mental illness and who consider
themselves to be artists rather than patients.
I will examine the alterity of mental illness and the role art plays towards the individual ('outsider') expressing their self, their recovery from mental health problems and in claiming a social position constructed on the experiences of
the artist and not on the experiences of the patient. The impact of mental illness on society may be reduced by addressing labels and stigmas that alter the person to a position of other (Corrigan, Kerr, & Knudsen, 2005).
Public mental health services have a tendency to emphasise what is wrong with the person rather than on their strengths. Once 'diagnosed' the person retains a stigmatised position in society as the 'patient' of mental health services whether as an inpatient in a hospital or a person living in the community (Rickwood,
2004).
Offering an alternative identity to the understandings associated with mental illness, art can be used to confront the disparity of being a patient and distinguish a person by strengths rather than by the illness (Parr, 2006; Pepper, 2003; s. Spaniol, 2001; Staricoff, 2004). Hence the artistic experience of the individual might provide a key to grasping the constructed alterity of mental illness and towards shifting stigmatised identities.
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