“…art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
I am about to take a detour from my trail of research on the gut microbiome and fermented foods to return to a topic I mentioned in my first post: the emotionally expressive artwork created by people with MDD. I decided to do some visual research by categorizing the pictures I looked at based on what major image is used to convey depression, and it was a sobering experience. I looked at over 130 such works of art (link). I found them so emotionally evocative that I began to be overcome with compassion for the people who created them. At one point I wondered if this was even a beneficial activity – if perhaps I was doing a disrespect to sufferers of depression by using their art in this way, but I persevered anyways. Below are my findings:
From the sample I took, monsters were the most frequent symbol used to represent depression. I found this intriguing, as it seems to suggest that the individual was objectifying their illness (i.e. – treating it as separate from themselves rather than part of themselves):
Second to monsters came skeletons/death. This category includes figures revealing partial skeletons, skull-like imagery, as well as people choking and/or dying:
Next came images including blood, and those with a predominantly red tone suggesting blood:
Other minor categories I detected were those which used eyes or hands:
Several articles I found suggest a growing trend of glamorizing mental illness, but I have yet to find any that speak specifically of the kind of images I have placed here. I want to be clear that I do not believe that the existence of such images is wrong – that they should not have been created or should be created no more – on the contrary, I think they can be a conduit for fostering empathy. They certainly acted as such for me. I think the problem comes in when we cease to view them with a mind for the real suffering that went into their creation. When the viewer uses it only to admire the beauty and/or grimace at the macabre imagery without seeking to better understand the mental illness, then it threatens to become voyeurism.
I’m honestly not sure what to do with the information I have here compiled. I definitely do not want to be voyeuristic; I hope that anyone who looks at this post does not walk away and immediately forget what they saw; but rather find it to be helpful in some way, either to themselves or their loved ones.
Microbial Mood 
This is really interesting – I’m excited to see where you can take your research next. The dialogue around mental health is important, and it’s so true that arts and expression can be a space for healing, so questions about how we can shape that dialogue to be productive and healthy without policing people’s self-expression are definitely in need of further exploration!
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