I’ve not been as good as I’d like at keeping my blog updated recently! It’s been a busy time with lots of writing and PhD work.
Today I’ve had an article published by the Wellcome Collection. It’s called Reclaiming My Story and is available to read here.
The article is about how I’ve used my lived experience of mental ill health as part of the service user movement. I talk about how I share my story to help improve mental health services, and also how this helps me make sense of my experiences and feel a sense of taking ownership of what I’ve been through.
It’s a little nerve-wracking having something so personal published. But I feel it’s an important piece, and I hope it helps highlight mental health, and is helpful to others reading who may have been through similar.
In his book Notes From Underground:: Zines and the politics of alternative culture, Stephen Duncombe explains that zines are “non-commercial, nonprofessional, small-circulation magazines which their creators produce, publish and distribute by themselves” (Duncombe, 2008, p10-11). They can be on literally any topic, from a favourite hobby to a political cause to writing about your life. I made my zine Interruptions for my module about my experiences of mental ill health, drawing on a variety of techniques. The main feature of the zine is a piece of life writing, and for this I used the Surrealist technique of automatic writing, where you write freely on a topic, as this helped me to get to the root of what I wanted to say without censoring myself. I also used the Dada cut out technique, taking reports that have been written about me, cutting the words out and rearranging them, so that I reclaim what’s been said about me.
Caroline Butterwick 