Empathy for artists: unpacking mental health resources, strategies and misconceptions

Written by Daniella Garcia, Graphic by Gabriela Menache

For a lot of us, reaching the end of spring quarter means finishing finals, sleepless nights and a lot of running around like headless chickens. The stress is real, and you might not have stopped along the way to check in on yourself. I’m here to remind you it’s Mental Health Awareness Month, so take a minute to breathe and remember to check in with how you’re
feeling.

It can be pretty overwhelming as the quarter comes to a close, and as piles of work get bigger, we tend to forget ourselves in the hustle — meaning your mental health goes out the window. But this month, and every month, it’s important to make sure we’re doing ok. And if we’re not, stop ourselves and ask, “Why am I feeling like this?”

Mental health in itself can sound severe, and a lot of preconceptions and stigmas might deter someone from wanting to talk about what’s going on internally. Among my friends and myself, a lot of those reasons range from fear of burdening someone, worrying others and simply verbalizing our feelings suddenly makes them all too real. Some people might not even know how to recognize when they’re losing touch with a healthy mental space.

Gabriela Menache, a third-year graphic design student, said her experience this quarter was visceral and introspective. For me, the shift from being at home to coming back and having so much work has been really overwhelming.

I think a lot goes into why we feel this way, and as art students, it becomes a weird situation where in order to make work we feel proud of, we need to be creative. Being creative isn’t the same thing as sitting and studying for a science test. To do anything, you have to be in that creative state of mind, and when you’re not, you’re making something that would take an hour when you’re feeling inspired, but now takes five hours if you’re not in the right headspace.

When you don’t produce the work you want, you start to think your professors begin to see you in a negative light. You don’t want to speak to them because of it, so you don’t go to class and you spiral. This quarter I’ve started to realize SCAD is more understanding than we think they are.

I think our professors understand because they are artists, and they recognize to a certain extent that frustration. It’s just a cycle that builds, and for me when it got so bad, I knew I wasn’t myself. It became more obvious to me and the people around me, so I ended up speaking to someone from SCAD and emailing my adviser what I was feeling. I started meeting with a counselor from Bee Well, where I’ve been talking through it and starting to understand why I was feeling this way.

I would always talk to people and say I’m feeling depressed or anxious, but I would never say why. When I started to tell my counselor I haven’t been going to classes, and I felt really behind, I didn’t feel the need to downplay what I felt because I was finally just being honest with myself. That felt pretty freeing.

“There are stresses that you have to deal with, stresses you can change and stresses you can eliminate,” said a SCAD counselor. Writing all these down, I found myself adding more to what I can change and deal with rather than eliminate, and this was my issue. I think we constantly carry all this weight when it’s stuff you can eliminate most of the time.

Writing down solutions and being self-reflective of these stressors helped me better manage everything that was going on in my head. Everyone’s experience is different, and there are so many ways of creating a healthier mental space, whether it’s talking to a counselor, talking to your friends or having those small practices and giving yourself that sense of relief from all the pressure lately. Your brain will thank you!