A New Lens

Drowned by stress. Maybe we should be worried about drowning in a cup of water. Remember the mice? They feel trapped in their situation. They stop fighting. They give up. They float on the water. They hang by their tails. Resigned to whatever happens. They let life happen to them. These are the signs of depression in mice. That is precisely the purpose of these sadistic experiments. Scientists put them through this in order to find ways to fix the chemical imbalance in our brains that makes us freeze, resign, give up. These methods are the industry standards for measuring the effectiveness of antidepressant treatments. 

        This perspective definitely fits my big picture goals. As a designer, I am surprised that mental health is not dealt with as often as other equally important areas of design such as technological advances and sustainability. After all, our mental health is directly linked to our quality of life. 

        To no surprise, finding people dealing with mental health disorders willing to open up about it was nearly an impossible task. I needed to find a group of people, best if it were anonymous for reliability, and ironically transparency. If people don’t feel exposed I believe they are more likely to open up. Reddit seemed to be a great platform for just this. I found a lot of pages there specific to dealing with mental health disorders. In these pages, people asked about coping mechanisms and whether other people shared the same experiences and feelings. 

        I embraced this opportunity and posted my own questions on multiple channels. It seemed silly not to browse these pages for other relevant posts and include the input into my thought process.