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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

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