Do you know how people in your world are really going? The message for R U OK?Day 2021 is Are they really OK? Ask them today. To recognise R U OK?Day and Mental Health Month in October, Mental Health and Me presents artworks by UNSW students that showcase their unique mental health journeys. This online exhibition aims to help destigmatise mental illness in our UNSW community and, in the spirit of R U OK?Day, start conversations that could change a life. To get you started, here are some tips to help you look out for signs you or someone else need help.

During Mental Health Month an art prize of $1000 and a Community Choice prize of $500 will be awarded to two students featured in the exhibition. Voting for the Community Choice prize is open to all members of the UNSW community:

This zine is an artistic expression of introspective thoughts in experiencing depression. Artwork allows me to share my ideas through a meaningful medium.

I have experienced anxiety and depression for many years. This painting represents a garden, a wandering space of colour and beauty, nourishing my mind and spirit, lifting me up and giving me hope.

Spot the we, that’s the key, for it’s the simple pleasures, that unite our community. When we share our pain, in the stormy weather, the sun can rise once more, as a refresher. In the sky it echoes, with hope and with healing, to bring us together, no matter what we are feeling!

Hang Thanh Bui
PhD Candidate

Find "me" in pandemic

Stage 1: Lost “me” In early 2020, I arrived in Australia to start my PhD journey in UNSW Canberra. Three weeks later, I am in the first lockdown since Canberra recorded the first case of coronavirus. After 2 weeks, I felt depressed, I did not feel “me” who often goes out, makes friends, keeps smiling, and energetic. I was not used to the silence, especially, in a new place far from home and friends. The Blue invaded my inner part with an impotent anger. There is emptiness growing inside my soul then the loneliness.

Stage 2: Melody in the quiet Blue At the bottom of sadness, in this silence, I realized the importance of family, friends and being with the nature. My mother shared with me her childhood suffering from Vietnam war. Today, we are fighting with an invisible enemy, COVID-19. I tried to fulfil the emptiness and Blue with the photos and travel memories. Before heading to Canberra from Sydney airport, I spent two days in Sydney and visited UNSW Kensington campus. I always love nature and travelling. I feel impressive by the birds, historic fig trees and especially, bird of paradise plants (Strelitzia). From this inspiration, I started to paint the melody of sunrise in silence whereas I can hear the sound of hope that one day, we can travel again, we can enjoy the state of nature if we stay strong together and are patient. In this quiet Blue, I remember the beauty of flower blooming, the bird spread its wings then soared into the air. For not giving up hope and love, it will create the powerful spirit to overcome the hardship and heal the pain.

This artwork was inspired by the idea that there are many layers to individuals, and that the face we see often hides vastly more emotions and thoughts than we can understand. The title is an allusion to T.S Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. His poetry has been influential in my understanding of the human psyche and it's complexity. My artwork aims to share an understanding of the difficulties and varying emotions within people that we cannot always see.

The ambiguous phrase engraved into a section of a failed concrete cast could be interpreted in a myriad of ways – a lament to wasted hours building the mould and pouring the concrete, accepting the possibility of having to complete my degree remotely, the failure of an airport limousine driver to wear a mask whilst on the job during a global pandemic. Coming into week 10 of this never-ending lockdown, I’m focusing on keeping an open and positive mind and making the best of a bad situation.

Can you do it? Can you be productive, and maintain friendships, and pay rent, and submit assignments, and go vegan, and ignore the steady collapse of the Gulf Stream and the now-pretty-obviously precedented "unprecedented" and also knock off your Aldi shop without touching too many surfaces and contracting a deadly respiratory disease? If you CAN muster the psychic energy to pull off any of these, on any given day, then I reckon take the W and go enjoy a cool beverage somewhere. You can do that.

Graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression and anxiety as compared to the general population. While most understood and handled as an individual issue, a closer look at the academic environment reveals a system that increasingly focuses on measuring performance based on prejudiced metrics. Is the research community ready for a systemic change to preserve the health of its young people? Or will the onus continue to be on students to ‘fix’ themselves?

“What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candour, and more unashamed conversation” - Glenn Close.

My artwork envisions a world where physical and mental health are of equal importance. A world where we rejoice and welcome open, honest, and vulnerable conversations without fear or shame. By utilising photography and digital illustration, I hope to capture the multiple layers of one’s health and their equal priority for both the individual and greater society.

The feeling of never being able to grasp a sense of accomplishment, in a perpetual state of pursuit, whilst a constant looming thought of stagnation signals failure. Such a feeling can propel one into a frenzied robotic state of existence, where persistent emotional suppression is an oasis in purgatory. Whenever you catch a glimpse of your true self, time catches you by surprise and the pain of addressing the undercurrents bubbling away only seem to grow more unconquerable, so you double down, perpetuating the cycle. Now has always been the time, to acknowledge the balance that exists at the core of all that is. To forget even for a second about external obligations, to remember to be mindful of your emotions, to not overwhelm yourself with expectation, to give your creative essence time to breathe and to experience the journey and flow of life, 慢走.

Forest Path (Acrylic on Canvas) is a free flowing transmutation of my relationship with depression. This relationship is challenging, forever changing and often difficult to comprehend, let alone express to others around me. This piece was created during a time of deep self reflection, where I was seeking to further understand my relationships with others, my place in the world and what is truly meaningful. It is through this that I arrived at a place that has always been home; the more-than-human life that surrounds our worlds. Forest Path is a journey into the forest as medicine. A healing journey through listening to the trees, feeling the sun, smelling fresh air and examining all the little places. It is a paying of respect to the pockets of heaven that are subtle in their healing. The colours are deep and dark and mysterious, but they are not gloom. It is an evolving hue, a metamorphic blue that can hold all of the emotions I feel. If fungi can grow from the darkest places, then perhaps I can too. Forest Path is a welcome home, it's a reminder that through feeling and processing there is healing. Allowing myself to create freely is a warm reminder to trust myself, to hold my own hand through this life path and to remember to smile at the natural beauty around me.

Everyone gets overwhelmed from time to time, to the point where it feels like a million things are happening all at once inside your head, almost cartoonishly. Anything can set you off, no matter how big or small. It can be a mess. I know I’m always feeling guilty for how I feel, how the smallest thing can really impact me. Sometimes bottling up how you feel isn’t an option. This work is for those who feel their emotions extremely deeply, who have been told to "get over it" or to "stop being so sensitive". You’re never too sensitive, you’re perfectly sensitive.

Everything is fine and therefore, so am I. Yellow is generally associated with optimism, energy and friendship. It surrounds me but it takes a backseat to white-purity and innocence which I'm using to represent my innermost thoughts and how it clouds over everything. Finally, darkness. It slowly seeps into my soul while my sturdy mask made from the same darkness tells me that no one should know about the thoughts in my head. I cannot break my mask, for everything is fine and therefore, so am I.

The inspiration to my artwork began with the internal question, "How do you deal with the emotional wounds and damage to our mental health caused by the corona effect?". My daily life was engulfed with fear due to concerns about Covid-19, and the drastic changes made to our social norm to refrain from people, outside activities, worsened my anxiety and depression. Art therapist and Painter Edith Kramer emphasized, 'Art as Therapy' and claimed that it helps protect our mental health through activities that visually express thoughts and emotions. Creating art helped me overcome my depression in the Corona era when I dealt with a lot of difficulties internally. Although I struggled with emotional, behavioral, and mental challenges, the process of creating art helped me release these emotions while reducing stress and anxiety. Rather than being overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions by the difficult situation, I took a step back and observed my mind. Whilst pondering, I came to a realization no one can solve my internal problems, and I should start this work with the desire to love myself first. This freed me from the habit of repeating thoughts of Negativity. I used the word '사랑'(Sa-rang) repetitively in my native language Korean, which means 'love'. This work was completed with the heart of generously giving myself the word I needed to heart and affirm most, 'love.' The sweetest memories and experiences of mine were expressed in warm colors. The use of constantly repeating the word "love" as the main body helped my mental healing process. In this abnormal reality, where everyone can't get out of their house and is isolated, I thought it was a way to talk about myself through art and appeal to the emotions I most needed. Repeating the word 'love' was a time of reflection for me and maximizing the concept of 'meditation.' Through this process, I naturally expressed my clogged emotions. Originally, meditation is known as a practice method to better our mental health in Asia, with the objective is to ‘relieve one from the pain of negativity and change our perspective into positive healthy thinking and life.' As the positive effects of meditation have been proven, it is being used to recover mental health, including stress management. Through this process, I overcame anxiety, overcame the scars of bad experiences of the past, and was able to have a more mature understanding of myself, through a time of reflection reminiscing difficult situations and conflicts within myself. Art with comforting and healing properties can heal wounds and boost self-esteem. In a situation where it is difficult to relieve stress due to these situational restrictions, I chose 'love' for myself. Comforting and loving myself was what I needed the most. That was the fastest way to recover from Mental Health. The way to relieve stress in this Pandemic, where the scope of actions is limited, will be very different from the pre-covid era. But remembering to choose love will make a difference to our mental and emotional well-being.

This hand cut collage is an illustration of my struggle with life-long depression. Though the dark tangles of thoughts that come with chemical, situational, and clinical depression can be difficult and even debilitating, there are pearls too which are sometimes formed in this agitation.

Shannen Tan
Bachelor of Psychological Science

I'm real, I promise

Many of us spent our early years finding comfort in make believe worlds of our imagination, but when a child gets lost in the mist of their thoughts, often they are left alone. 14% of all children under 11 in Australia are affected by mental illness every year, yet society frequently remains silent or unbelieving of a child’s hardships, which can lead to years of shame and doubt. This work conveys the experiences of many, myself included, of childhood hardships being silenced, and how mental illness truly does not wait for one to grow up before ripping the seams of one’s reality.

This is a selection of small ink paintings I created featuring my characters Girl and Rabbit, as they (and I) navigate the daily challenges of fluctuating mental health. They were created as part of a mental health art challenge I hosted on Instagram last year, where I aimed to foster a safe space for people to create art and discuss mental health. Through Girl and Rabbit, I felt comfortable expressing parts of my mental health journey, particularly involving anxiety, and the little internal butterflies that often accompany me on this journey.

Meredith Toyama
Bachelor of Fine Arts

I am not ignoring you I am just unpacking

I recorded my mood for 30 days and colour coded them into the stripes. The text is a guide I often find myself using when I try to communicate what’s on my mind. My practice revolves around the relationship between the mind and body, and the documentation of self. I explore mental health through the lens of anxiety and PTSD, and how it influences how one experiences time as space. My aim is to encourage healing and self-reflection by delving into our relationships with ourselves and others.

Power, attitude, behaviour and emotions -everything is controlled by our mind, then why not pamper it with some mindful meditation. In this over-achieving and uncertain world let’s be a little more kinder to ourselves and consider our mental health before anything else. On this mental health month, I wish each one of you great strength and courage through your mental health journey. More power to you, today and everyday. Everyday phenomenal.

Planting Wellness portrays my personal mental health routine. Painting, sleeping enough, reading a book, exercising and drinking a cup of coffee every day all allow me to be a better and mentally well human being that grow and spread kindness, positivity, forgiveness, energy, passion and many more qualities that make the world a better place.