“Mental illness is the medical secret.”
Welcome to Mamamia’s art endeavour, the Voulez-Vous Project. Every week we celebrate emerging artists, designers, illustrators, creators and women who knit using their vaginas. (Kidding. Maybe.) Our aim: to help the internet become a slightly more beautiful, captivating, or thought-provoking place by making art accessible.
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Photographer Anne Betton was diagnosed with a mental illness – bipolar disorder – in 2009. In the five years since, she’s spent her career photographing others with similar illnesses and doing her best to humanise the suffering.
The words “mental illness” come with a stigma attached. It’s like most people are scared to even say it, like it’s something that must be hidden or shied away from. But it’s not. And that’s exactly what Betton wants out of her project.
The photo series came about when Betton visited a friend, Sophie, in a psychiatric hospital. She brought her camera along and soon enough, people were lining up for photos. Betton realised she and all of these people had something in common – a mental illness.
“We chose the title together – ‘Give a face to the mental illness’ – to show to everybody we are like them, even if sometimes we struggle with cognitive problems,” Betton told Mamamia.
Related: “Today, I stand with every woman who is honest about motherhood or mental illness”.
Betton says there was a need for a project like this because so many people that don’t personally struggle with mental illness find it difficult to understand.
“It’s the medical secret,” Betton said.
“I’m trying to show that we’re not different and that we can understand everybody, even if we don’t speak the same language.”
Betton says so often relationships break down because of mental illness, including her own, and she wants to show that it’s not the sufferer’s fault. It’s the illness.
Related: Osher Günsberg: ‘I didn’t just “open up” about my mental health.’
“My parents don’t see me anymore because of my mental illness,” Betton said.
“Many people cannot distinguish between a real personality and symptons. We are not responsible for our illness.”
Click through the gallery below for Betton’s work. You can find her website and make a donation by clicking here.
Do you know an artist (or are YOU an artist) who creates beautiful or thought-provoking work and whom you think should be featured on Mamamia’s Voulez-Vous Project? Send an email to caitlin.stower@mamamia.com.au.
Top Comments
Damn this annoys me.
As someone with a long standing and diagnosed mental illness that that involved numerous medication and bi-weekly sessions with a psychiatrist for several years you would not even notice me if I was standing in line front of you while we waited for our latte or reading my book on the train.
It may come as a suprise but I really do look like everyone else.
Mental illness is not just about stylish black and white pictures with smoking, beards or tattoos while wearing horses heads FFS.
I quite like these images and the message portrayed...with the exception of the ones glamorising smoking. Surely in this day and age we shouldn't be seeing smoking portrayed as a good thing
People smoke. It doesn't glamourise it, it shows these people for who they are, flaws and all.
Sorry, but I don't agree with you. The very first photo shows a woman complete in a sexy pose with smoke in hand billowing about all prettily....to my eye that is glamorising smoking.
The rate of smoking amongst the mentally ill is much much higher then regular population. I think it's nearly double. So no this is not glamourising smoking but it is showing the realities of life as a sufferor of mental illness.
It looks like a joint. In some parts of the world it is legally prescribed to treat some mental illnesses. I have bipolar, marijuana reigns in a manic episode faster than any prescribed medication i've been on, and the best part is I can still troubleshoot I.T related issues, and multitask and my normal pace.
When i was taking prescription medication.... lets just say i went from the top of the intelligence spectrum straight to the bottom. I have a mortgage, so going on disability was never an option.