Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Mental Health And Spiritual Well-Being: The Generational Differences Of Worship Experiences In The Multicultural Church, Lashawna S. Wills

Masters Theses

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH), nearly one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness, 52.9 million people in 2020. “Mental health and well-being are an asset whatever an individual’s age, race or ethnicity, and mental health problems [do not] discriminate [based on] these attributes.” The execution of this research is to facilitate healing within a community in need and open avenues of conversation for understanding, relativity, and oneness within the body of Christ. The researcher will use the qualitative design method through research in literature and population cohorts. Using research sources of panel discussions, …

Mental Illness In Modern Media, Grace Smith

Honors Projects

This paper will focus on the way mental illness is portrayed in modern media, specifically psychological thriller movies, as many of them feature main characters with some sort of mental illness. The specific mental illnesses present in the movies discussed in this paper are as follows: borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Psychological thriller movies influence the way consumers view mental illness and those who suffer from mental illnesses. The potential effects of these portrayals will be explored through Stuart Hall’s theory of reception, as it was created based on television media, making it one of …

A Typology Of Bad Characters: Understanding Moral Badness As Mental Illness, Aidyn Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents Susan Wolf’s theories on freedom and responsibility. It places special emphasis on her Reason View as presented in her book, Freedom Within Reason. I analyze three types of bad characters, where a “bad character” is defined as someone with a stable and pervasive pattern of acting badly. I argue that Wolf’s Reason View entails that bad characters are psychologically incapable of doing the right thing for the right reasons. Therefore, according to the demands of Wolf’s Reason View, we cannot hold them responsible for their actions. This spells trouble: aren’t bad characters precisely the type of people …

The Role Of Rural And Urban Geography And Gender In Community Stigma Around Mental Illness, Shawnda Schroeder, Chih Ming Tan, Brian Urlacher, Thomasine Heitkamp

Indigenous Health Faculty Publications

Empirical evidence describes the negative outcomes people with mental health disorders experience due to societal stigma. The aim of this study was to examine the role of gender and rural/urban living in perceptions about mental illness. Participants completed the Day’s Mental Illness Stigma Scale, a nationally validated instrument for measuring stigma. Directors of Chambers of Commerce in North Dakota distributed the electronic survey to their members. Additionally, distribution occurred through use of social media and other snowball sampling approaches. Analysis of data gathered from 749 participants occurred through examination of the difference in perceptions based on geography and gender. The …

Mental Illness And Creativity In The Selected Poetry Of Robert Lowell And Anne Sexton, Nicholas Huard

Honors Program Theses and Projects

One should never underestimate the potential of someone who suffers from mental illness, as many individuals with mental illness can create great art. Madness, after all, can be seen as a sign of genius. The goal of this thesis is to show how mental illness and creativity are connected. Despite suffering bouts of madness, poets such as Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton displayed genius through their poetry. “Skunk Hour” by Lowell and, Sexton’s “45 Mercy Street” depict madness while displaying a deep understanding of poetic form.

I Lie Awake, Pauline Juliet Ku

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Maggie Kim is a Korean American girl coming of age in Chicago and San Jose before moving to Pasadena, CA to study Biology at Caltech. Her struggles with her own sexuality, immediate family, growing up in an abusive church, traumatic memories and hallucinations and delusions make for a riveting read that validates her personal experience through trauma, stigma, and mental illness in the first-person point of view.

Eschatology And Christian Ethics: An Argument For Disabled Beatitude, Marco Peter Spataro

Religious Studies Honors Theses

Catholic eschatology studies four elements of the afterlife: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. The primary purpose of this paper will be to evaluate the prerequisites for beatification, the state of being for souls elevated to heavenly status. This paper will seek to argue in favor of disabled beatification, particularly for the souls whose mental illness prohibited their use of right reason in this life, through an examination of malignant theology, mental illness, a Catholic definition of God, and the implications such a definition has on the wider study and care of the mentally ill. I will then suggest a path …

Skin Stories And Family Feelings: The Contradictions Of Skin Picking In Mother And Daughter, Katrina Jacinto

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

Skin picking, otherwise known as dermatillomania, is considered to be a medical disorder by the DSM-5. However, the embodied experiences of skin picking in myself and my mother do not align with the neat definitions offered by psychiatry. Through autoethnographic material and an ethnographic interview with my mother, I argue that skin picking is a bodily technique that is pathologized through stigma. In particular, I suggest that skin picking reveals the body as a polyvalent entity, in which the same features and practices take on different meanings in different bodies. This frames the discrepancies between mine, and my mother's, experiences. …

Death By Delusion: Representations Of Mental Illness In Gogol, Dostoevsky, And Nabokov, Bryan Reed

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This paper is dedicated to an analysis of representation of mental illness in 19th-20th century works of Russian writers: Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Double), Nikolai Gogol (“Nevsky Prospect”, “The Overcoat”, and “The Diary of a Madman”), and Vladimir Nabokov (Despair). My analysis is primarily focused on the approaches these authors employ to represent mental illness. When I began my research, I also set out to trace the evolution of portrayals of mental illness in Russian literature, from one of its founders, Alexander Pushkin, to Nabokov as an émigré writer living in Germany during the 1930s and representing the literary tradition in …

Water Lake And Other Stories, Allison Rose Levy

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This excerpt from the novel Water Lake takes place at an undisclosed time in an undisclosed American location called Water Town. It primarily follows Jason and Holly, who are employees at Water Hardware and lifelong residents of the insular, religious, isolated town. Water Town is in constant industrial and environmental decay and hosts many mysterious natural and social phenomena such as an unusual amount of animal deaths, a gender ratio skewed disproportionately towards men, and a single seal in a local body of water hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. During an episode of impulsivity induced by neurological trauma, …

Mental Health, Substance Use, And The Importance Of Religion During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Ji-Yeun Park, Thushara Galbadage, Hyuna Lee, David C. Wang, Brent M. Peterson

Faculty Articles & Research

COVID-19 impacted multiple facets of life, with implications on physical, mental, and societal health. Specifically, long COVID and related losses have exacerbated complex and prolonged grief responses and mental disorders including depression and anxiety. These mental health concerns are in turn associated with increased detrimental coping strategies including substance use disorders (SUD). The social and interpersonal implications of SUD are varied. Secondary data analyses from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) collected during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed an increase in substance use behaviors and mental health problems. Self-reported religious activities had a positive meditating effect on reducing …

Art: The Beautiful, Relieving Agent For Mental Illness, Stella G. Newmoyer

Composition Exemplars

Art: the Beautiful, Revealing Agent for Mental Illness is aimed to present a thorough analysis of the relationship between art and mental illness. With this proposal, I show the hidden meanings behind some art works, The Starry Night and Kaleidoscope Cat V11, and how the importance of creation gives to others. Creation allows people with mental illness to express their personal experiences liberally on a medium, to potentially release their tension they may hold inside their mind. As my research proposal demonstrates, art provides individuals with a sense of unattachment from reality, by allowing them to freely express their mental …

Participation And Community Healing In The Me2/ Orchestra, Lee Cyphers

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

The Me2/ Orchestra is a Boston-based community orchestra for people living with mental illness and those who support them. Me2/’s mission, according to its website, is “to erase the stigma surrounding mental illness (including addiction) through supportive classical music rehearsals and inspiring performances.” In order to investigate the methods and practices used by Me2/ to fulfill this mission, this annotated bibliography compiles important literature on community music initiatives with social projects. Concepts of “participation” and “performance” are explored, as well as problems posed by research into the effectiveness of arts programs. In addition, the distinction is made between amateur music-making …

Are Stereotypes, Such As The ‘Headclutcher’, In Stock Images For Mental Illness Stigmatizing?, Laura Orton

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Public perception and attitudes of mental illness are heavily influenced by mass media, so it is important the visual communication delivered into society is responsible and not unintentionally damaging. Stereotypes are used frequently in visual communication for speed of understanding. However, stereotypes are often based on unfounded assumptions, and these assumptions can cause stigma towards the stereotyped group. This study questions what stereotypes, if any, are present in stock images of mental illness and discusses what effect they may have on stigma. There have been previous calls for images such as the ‘headclutcher’ to not be used to represent mental …

Disruption: A Collection Of Narrative Profile About The Stigma And Discrimination Of Mental Illness On Senior High School Students, James Garreth Gomez

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress

This study summarizes the stigma and discrimination being experienced by young adults and acknowledges areas wherein research is needed to identify the factors that contribute to this matter. The following questions are addressed: (1) What kind of stigma and discrimination do these teenagers with depression and/or an anxiety disorder experience? (2) How can the stigma and discrimination of mental illness be portrayed through the particularities of the narrative profile? (3) What techniques will be used for the narrative profile that may effectively portray lived experiences and raise awareness? A collection of narrative profile essays was established for this research for …

The Brain Scan As Ideograph, Paige Welsh

English (MA) Theses

Medical imaging devices have enabled doctors to render images of the brain without cutting into the body. These images are colloquially called “brain scans.” Through journalism and mass dissemination online, brain scans have become an example of Michael Calvin McGee’s “ideograph,” a language term that subtly takes on outsized political and symbolic meaning to enforce state power. In conversation with theories of new materialism, I situate the brain scan as an ideograph within Jenny Edbauer’s model of rhetorical ecologies. The rhetorical force of the brain scan comes out of a collision between René Descarte’s mind/body dualism, the medical model of …

Narrating Madness: Building Narratives Against Privileged Identity, Kristin Santa Maria

All Dissertations

This dissertation examines how competing narratives related to madness and mental health can provide insight into the inconsistencies of preconceived biases that tie into privilege and power. These biases relate to identities associated with race, gender, class, and embodiment. By exploring madness narratives, we can see how madness often becomes a quality used to isolate and “other” people that act against typical societal and cultural norms. Works of fiction and nonfiction that pertain to madness narratives can either be used to perpetuate stereotypes of normalcy or as a vehicle to allow for a more open and frank discussion of madness …

At What Price: Insidious Hegemony And Character Archetypes Woven Into Until Dawn, Courtney Harvey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Supermassive Games’s Until Dawn tasks its players with helping eight teenagers survive a night of terror. All eight playable characters may live or die depending on the player’s choices and gameplay proficiency. Despite its intricacies, the game still relies heavily on horror movie tropes, which the characters embody, and they face different treatment based on their gender, race, and sanity. Particularly, the weapons available to them and the scenarios for their deaths and survival contribute to trapping the characters within their given characteristics and forcing them into a role that they cannot ever fully break free from. While the branching …

An Unfinished Melody: Mental Illness, Worship Music, And The Tension Of The Pentecostal “Now” And “Not Yet, Brianna Turbeville

Masters of Theological Studies

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, it is estimated that nearly 20% of adults within the United States suffer from some form of mental illness.1 With roughly one-fifth, if not more, of the entire U.S. population facing a daily internal battle of some sort, this is an issue that is certainly elemental to the overarching purpose of the Church as an agent of reconciliation of creation with Creator. A prevalent problem requires prevalent solutions. What is something even more pervasive in every culture than mental health? Music. Melodies and lyrics are native to virtually every individual on earth. …

Don't Be Another Girl, Brittany M. Owens

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

DON’T BE ANOTHER GIRL is a collection of poetry that braids together themes of familial relationships, death, abuse, mental illness, feminism, and attempts at healing. These free-verse and prose poems use pop culture, politics, and elements of nature as vehicles to explore and reject the violence of the western white patriarchy. In the first section the speaker questions the curses that flow out from bloodlines—genetic traits, behaviors, and gender expectations. The second section utilizes lyrical prose blocks that thread together trauma and sleep paralysis, following an emotionally immobilized speaker who struggles to step off a dangerous escalator, away from toxic …

Sebastian Faulks’ Human Traces:A Journey Into The Depths Of The Human Psyche, Essam Fattouh

BAU Journal - Society, Culture and Human Behavior

Sebastian Faulk’s novel, Human Traces (2006), embarks on a new trend in contemporary English fiction. Through its representations of two main protagonists, pioneers in the field of psychology between the 1870s and 1918, Faulks traces the formative years of the development of the young discipline of psychiatry. Even though Faulks works in the realist traditions of Charles Dickens and George Eliot, yet he delves into such major questions as the role of unconscious motivations in human individual behaviour, the causes of mental illness, and the very attempt to understand the nature of the human being. The time frame of the …

Solving The Jwu Mental Health Crisis, Kayley Gray, Christopher Protano, Sawyer Cosgrove, Dylan Villa

Academic Symposium of Undergraduate Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hannah & Nana: A Personal Memoir On Appalachian Intergenerational Trauma, Womanhood, & Family, Hannah Dunn

Honors Projects

I was deeply affected by the death of my beloved nana in 2018. After her death, my family asked me to be the storyteller for us. Thus, for my Honors Project at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), I decided to write a personal memoir on my family. This memoir explores how we fit into notions of womanhood and family in Appalachia, as well as studying the effects of intergenerational trauma on us. Qualitative research, in the form of the autoethnography, serves as the methodology for this project. In writing a creative memoir, I have transformed my personal to the academic.

Allure Of The Supernatural: South Korean Realities And The French Interest In The Private Lives Of Plants And The Vegetarian [L’Attrait Du Surnaturel : Les Réalités Sud-Coréennes Et L’Intérêt Des Français Pour La Vie Rêvée Des Plantes Et La Végétarienne], Adelaide Choi

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Since establishing diplomatic relations in the nineteenth century, South Korea and France have seen excellent bilateral ties and cultural exchanges through the present day. The vibrant nature of this exchange reveals itself in the translation of French literature into Korean and in the increasing demand for Korean literature in France, where occidental and francophone influences have traditionally flourished. In this thesis I interrogate the French interest in Korean culture, using translated novels as vehicles of exploration: Lee Seung-u’s The Private Lives of Plants and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. I propose three analytical lenses through which to examine the appeal …

Beyond Mental And Physical Pain: A Non-Reductive Account Of Suicide, Aya Aly Ragheb

Theses and Dissertations

What is the stigma behind our understanding of suicide? What causes this stigma? Should suicide only be viewed in relation to physical pain, as medicine often views it, or mental pain, as psychiatry views it? Or is it a more complex phenomenon? Can we think of suicide as a rational act that is, on the one hand, independent of pain, without, on the other hand, reducing it to mental illness? I will argue that if we can, we can give a less reductive account of suicide. In this paper, we shall attempt to give an answer to the above questions …

Provenance, Jennifer Ann Mutch

Honors Theses

Provenance is a term used in art history to refer to the record of an artwork’s life after its creation: the paper trail it has left through time showing who has purchased it, sold it, moved it, restored it, displayed it. Provenance’s intertwined stories use the things we leave behind, both physical and digital, to explore absence, mother-daughter relationships, formative friendships, and personal identities.

Jane is a middle-aged woman whose mother-in-law, an artist named Francie, has just passed away unexpectedly, leaving her home to be cleared out. As she sorts through a lifetime of belongings and paintings, she continues …

Disney Channel Serial Killers, Emily Timmins

Honors Theses - Providence Campus

The appearance of actors Zac Efron and Ross Lynch, known for their roles as teenagers on popular Disney Channel productions, as serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer in the films Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile and My Friend Dahmer has raised questions about the effects of these portrayals on the Generation Z demographic. How does having these former Disney Channel actors portray these serial killers affect the way that Generation Z views Bundy and Dahmer? Through examining movie reviews by both professional critics and audience members, as well as social media posts on websites such as Twitter, Tumblr, …

The Gender Epidemic: Intersecting Disease, Gender, And Sexuality In A Graphic Novel, Autumn Cejer

All NMU Master's Theses

For my thesis, I wrote a graphic novel set in a world where certain people possess powers that society tries to suppress by viewing them as a disease. The story focuses on two super-powered individuals on opposite sides of the law who handle this oppression very differently. Although these characters would easily be able to overpower the non-powered people in charge, they are too afraid to do so. Internalized guilt from possessing abilities they did not ask for adds an additional layer of conflict, just as women and disabled persons are constantly made to feel like they should apologize for …

Heavy Is The Head, Elizabeth Wiles

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

"Heavy is the Head: how my mental illness made me a writer" is a collection of poetry about a journey in and through mental illness. It engages the social action issue of mental health awareness. "Heavy is the Head" tells a story of mental illness, how it was accepted, how it was used to improve, and how it can pave the road to self-acceptance.

Mental Illness In Horror Films, Nix Bradly

Emerging Writers

The depiction of mental illness within in the horror film genre has historically been non-inclusive or demonizing of the mentally ill. When we look at the genre today, there are still many instances of this villainization of the mentally ill, although there are recent examples of more progressive depictions of those afflicted. This article looks at the history and current trends of depictions of mental illness in films and argues that we can help move the genre away from stigmatizing mental illness by uplifting and supporting those who have mental illness to express themselves through the art of horror film …