By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
WHEN experiencing mental illness, loneliness comes naturally.
Even though her better judgement told her otherwise, Leena, from Cranbourne, felt she was isolated in her suffering.
But after joining the creative expression group run by EACH Social and Community Health, Leena was reminded and comforted by the fact that she wasn’t alone in her suffering.
She spoke of how beneficial art had been to her rehabilitation at Friday’s Art Heals exhibition, the first mental health art expo run by EACH, and held at the Cardinia Cultural Centre.
In the last year or so EACH has grown its services to include Casey, Cardinia and Dandenong and participants from all three regions had artwork on display at this week’s exhibition.
“It does help because you also see a lot more to do with other people who have similar problems and similar issues,” Leena said of the art program.
“You often think when you’re unwell that nobody else is going to be feeling like this or understand how I’m feeling.
“Although logically you know that’s not true but you feel like there’s nothing worse than this, inside.
“But then when you’re in a group of other people like that as well as you, you can see that we’re not really as unwell as we might feel because we’re able to function in these groups.”
Tina Strafford, a community outreach worker, recently started working for EACH and runs the creative expression group.
It was Tina’s idea to hold the exhibition, an event now likely to be held annually.
“I’m so proud, one, because my manager trusted me enough to do this and I wanted to do it classy and do it nice and it all worked out and paid off,” Tina said.
“Mental health and art always go together. I’m an art therapist, I do work as a support worker with EACH but my background is art and art therapy and I know how it helps people when they can’t actually speak or say things that are going on in their head.”
Tina points out a particular piece of artwork hanging on the cultural centre wall, created by one of her participants.
Depicted on the canvas, among other things, is a person, then a wall, then a drawing of the world.
‘She’s very articulate but she couldn’t talk, she could not explain what was going on in her head,” Tina said of the artist who drew the piece.
“So to actually draw it out … she was actually seeing these gremlins crawling all up and down her house, this is the vortex that she kept feeling like she was falling into.
“And she felt that there was the world, and there was a wall between her and the world.
“She was so outside of the whole world and everything else.”
EACH Recovery South East Area Manager Lisa Gort was blown away by the exhibition, echoing the pride expressed by Lisa.
“There needs to be further di-stigmatisation of mental health, so having artwork in the community and people being able to express where they’re at with their mental health goes a long way to help them,” Ms Gort said.
For more information about EACH, visit www.each.com.au.
