Culture & Identity
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Minds Matter Magazine Volume III Issue I <strong>Culture</strong> & <strong>Identity</strong><br />
“For people dealing with mental health<br />
issues, a diagnosis... can be a key step in feeling<br />
better,” Kilroy-Marac said.<br />
<strong>Culture</strong> has sway on the language surrounding<br />
psychiatric labels. The way we think<br />
about the brain may reflect how we cope<br />
with imperfections within it.<br />
society, behaviour, and health, I now know<br />
what to do if I wander too far or get too<br />
distressed. I simply need to wake up and<br />
connect with the outside environment.<br />
Recognizing education culture<br />
and its role in mental health.<br />
Elanna Clayton<br />
Kilroy-Marac noted that if we thought<br />
of the brain as a garden, we may be more<br />
likely to think about self-care and healing<br />
than our current thinking of the brain as a<br />
computer.<br />
“With the computer metaphor, we<br />
have ideas about switches, overloads, wiring,<br />
and fixes,” she said.<br />
I have faith that psychiatry can co-exist<br />
with other languages and explanations<br />
of mental health. The key term, of course,<br />
is co-exist. If psychiatry can remember that<br />
they are the servants of the people in distress,<br />
and listen to them without the biomedical<br />
filter, then I have hope that incidences<br />
of recovery will outpace the number of<br />
people diagnosed with mental health conditions.<br />
With the introduction and acceptance<br />
of mindfulness (a philosophy associated with<br />
Asian-area religions) as a therapy, psychiatrists<br />
are moving in this direction.<br />
Unlike the 2010 movie adaptation,<br />
Lewis Carroll’s original Alice’s Adventures in<br />
Wonderland does not show Alice coming out<br />
of the rabbit hole. She simply wakes up.<br />
30<br />
As I explore the wonders of language,<br />
Our early stages in education can change the ways we view and understand mental<br />
health for the rest of our lives.<br />
TRIGGER WARNING: SELF-HARM, SUICIDE<br />
Image By Phoebe Maharaj