Mental health | 2021
For a school project I captured the different stages of mental health and things 'getting bad (again)' I did this in a series of portraits with models and myself. This is a project to bring awareness to the struggles of mental health, which no matter how we identify, we all can struggle with. My aim was to bring special awareness to men’s mental health.
Stage one; losing contact
We don't do it on purpose, we might not even realise we're doing it at all. It's a slow gradual process in which we lose true contact with our friends, our family, and the people closest to us. We turn our back on them and ultimately also on ourselves.
Stage two; feeling lonely
The nights we spend curled up in bed, we might wonder where it all went wrong. Why we seem to be the only one in the entire world feeling like this. Those feelings of immense loneliness, even if we might not seem lonely from someone else's point of view.
Phase three; expectations
The expectation coming from outside influences; school, work, friends, family & societal, can get to be to much. Though they might have good intentions, to us it may feel like we're being graded and that if we don't live up to those expectations, we're not good enough.
Phase four; a game of pretending
For different reasons we might mask our emotions and put on a mask for the outside world. We don't want people to know, we might believe we can deal with it ourselves, 'fix' it ourselves. We don't show our true face, and tears will be wiped away quickly. All to uphold the 'everything is fine' lie we're also telling ourselves.
Phase five; giving in
It rarely goes as we had planned, but it all became too much to hold bottled up and we let that tear roll down our cheek in public for the first time. It really is the first cry for help, the first time we let people know that maybe we're not doing so fine after all.
Phase six; accepting help
Even though we might have cried for help the first time, doesn't automatically mean we're ready to receive the help offered to us. We will, though gradually, accept the offers and let people hold our hand as they lead the way.
