Speaking Our Minds – Narrating Mental Illness

Catalog description

Stories of mental illness are all too often told from the perspective of those who study or treat it. By contrast, this course examines mental illness through the lens of those who experience it first-hand and creatively transform their experience into something that can be shared with others. Narrative has the unique ability to relate the felt experience of mental illness in a way that the conventional patient history, chart, or any strictly medical documentation cannot. Through close examination of video testimony, memoir, autobiographical fiction, theater and film, students will learn to receive and interpret the illness experience, with a focus on applications for public health, advocacy and social justice.