Illuminating Journeys

Using creativity to share stories and advocate for change.

About this Project

The Illuminating Journeys project supported people with lived experience of involuntary mental health treatment in British Columbia (BC) to inform mental health public policy by sharing their lived experience expertise in creative and accessible ways. With this project, Health Justice hoped to make space for people to have their voice heard in shaping public policy that impacts their lives by offering an opportunity for people to engage with their stories and share their experience through the creation of art. While making their art we asked them to reflect on their experience and what changes they would like to see to mental health law in BC. The art that was developed in support of policy change based on their experiences shows this in many ways, from showing how they felt when involuntarily detained, to what would have actually helped them, and more.

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Gallery

We encourage you to read about each piece.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • "Embrace"

    This was done as a reflection during the project.

    Made of inked stamped words pulled directly from one charting note, on a backdrop of newsprint. Overlaid by a paper cutout of a person's silhouette embracing themselves in a hug.

    I wish there was more care taken into the pathologizing language used when describing ​patients and how harmful this can be for someone trying to access their chart to make sense of their experience. It can make you doubt your perceptions—including whether you truly understood what was going on, whether you have the correct perceptions of reality or not—and leaves one feeling drained of hope.

    It is a mischaracterization at best, and outright lies for most. We are humans at the end of the day, not a string of labels.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • “My Experience of Illness”

    This piece depicts me in a cave, being attacked by black tentacles coming through the entrance to the cave. It’s based on a visualization I used to do when I was struggling with voices. I would imagine myself in a protective cave with walls all around me that the voices could not penetrate. The cave was a kind of safe place. But, I was not fully safe. I would imagine the voices coming through the entrance to the cave as black tentacles. I would stand and try to ward them off – fighting them with anger. I also had another tool. I visualized it as a music box. It represented the way I used to whistle in order to create sound to compete with the voices. The music box is depicted in the image. The third item that appears in the image is the fire behind me. It was a fire that represented my inner strength, the energy that kept me going, and my own goodness. The tentacles were trying to attack it through their entrance to my cave, but it kept burning nonetheless.

Amy Frank

  • I would like to see Western Medicine broaden their view on what factors play into the development of mental illness. Right now our medical system follows a biochemical model, which is only aimed at diagnosing and treating symptoms caused by a chemical imbalance. Mental illness and the development of mental health go much deeper than brain chemistry. Symptoms are symptoms, not causes. The rise in depression and anxiety during Covid should be proof that things such as circumstances can affect and cause symptoms of mental illness. Trauma, substance misuse, our internal and external environment, upbringing, and much more play a role. Looking at these other factors is vital in fostering mental health, especially when pharmaceutical medications can have such dire and serious side effects.

Krissy

  • In this piece there is a picture of a medicine wheel which had the 4 directions on it and it’s added became I’m Indigenous. This face is like a mask I’ve seen but this is a representation of myself and the footprints represent myself in childhood. I feel as if the hospital isn’t a positive way to approach mental health as there is no Indigenous perspective. This is all from an Indigenous perspective.

Celeste

  • You are what you eat, the psychiatric system is upside-down.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • This is a sun and I added a face because I saw a child’s artwork recent that was a sun with a face and it made me smile and I thought it was cute. Getting sunlight also increases your mood and would be healthy to spend the days outdoors if we are there to get healthy.

Schoena

  • I feel the hospital has no colour and feels dead and depressing and I would like if there were a garden or if the walls were colours I like, such as pink, neon, light blue, yellow and lime green, gold and silver.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • I also included images of sketches of fellow patients to highlight the healing value of solidarity and sharing lived experiences.

    This sketch of a person wearing pajamas and hugging a small potted tree, wrapped in a towel. She has brown hair covered mostly by her toque, beige complexion, cheek piercings and glasses and is looking a bit zoned out, which is fair as it was 7am and it’s also rather boring inside the unit.

    She had rescued this tree from the garbage after staff had thrown it away following Christmas and she carried it around like this for days.

    She made me happy and I intended for this to speak to the value of other people’s perspectives to highlight the missing and critical role that lived experience could play in the mental system.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • "Mask"

    This was done in hospital during an admission.

    I constantly feel like I am shouting my needs only for it to be overridden, ignored. I don't ever feel safe fully "unmasking" and feel as if I always have to hide behind some façade to maintain compliance. A lot of this feels reminiscent of previously traumatic dynamics I've experienced.

    I wish I was provided with more of a voice during my treatment and listened to instead of presumed incapable of understanding the gravity of the situation. This is exemplified by the general lack of facial features on this piece—no mouth (which symbolizes my "voice") or eyes (not being able to trust what I see), and one ear (rarely feeling heard). My lost senses are disorienting and destabilizing.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • This submission is a journey through mental illness with the intersection of violation of human rights and dignity through a series of Haiku method of poetry adapted to tell the story of my experiences of hospitalization.

    Text in the piece:
    Spinning mind shifting.

    Out of control. In shambles.

    Help me now. I fall.

    Before it is too late

    I hope for relief. Soothe me.

    Heal me. Please save me.

    Slam me to the ground

    So frightened, afraid, confused.

    You're so powerful

    I am at your feet

    Your choice - to raise me up high.

    Or let me fall down.

    Helpless like a child

    I scream. Hear me. See me.

    Isolated fear.

    Crazy exuberant.

    So high. So low. Naked pain.

    This is for today.

    Tomorrow will be

    Crumbled on a mattress.

    State of undress. Sedated.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • “Treated Involuntarily the First Time”

    This is a collage made up of royalty free photos from Pixabay.

    When I made it, I was remembering back to how I felt when I was being treated involuntarily for the first time. I have never been a danger to others and was being treated involuntarily because I was viewed as a danger to myself. Yet, in many ways, I felt like a criminal prisoner. I didn’t have a criminal record, but I had a medical record that I believed would follow me my whole life. With the use of computer systems nowadays I think it probably does. We can get better and change, but the deficit focused records of the past are always at hand for medical workers that come in contact with us. That terrible record – focused on all the things wrong with me and none of my strengths - was being used to hold and drug me against my will.

    The first time I was hospitalized the drug I was on had really bad side effects that were worse than the symptoms I had been struggling with. I considered suicide because they were so bad, but decided that instead of that, I would focus on convincing them I was well so I could get out of hospital and off the medication. That’s what I did.

    I remember also wishing that I was in jail instead of the hospital because I thought that in jail I wouldn’t be drugged and dealing with the almost unbearable side effects. If I was in jail, I would also know how long I was to be incarcerated.

    I remember the great power the doctors had over me, so I have depicted them above me. One is writing the medical records that held such power and seemed to be the start of it all. The creation of those records was the first step in my loss of freedom and self-agency. The other doctor looks down on me condescendingly. I felt like there was a lot of condescension when I was sick.

    The column of keys represent my incarceration in a hospital and loss of freedom. It also represents the keys the medical system had to my life – the control they had over what I could and could not do.

    I am depicted in the bottom right corner by the hands grasping an imprisoning fence. All I wanted when I was in hospital was out.

    This image is of my first and worst experience of involuntary treatment. I am not against involuntary treatment. I had a much better experience of it years later that caused me to make my first big step in recovery. One difference was that when I had the positive experience, I had a lot more input into my treatment. I was given more choices. It also happened while I was in the community on extended leave so had more freedom and a greater sense of self-agency. I did not feel so trapped. I have very mixed feelings about involuntary treatment, but the later experience, not depicted here, was life changing in a positive way.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • "Changing Seasons"

    This watercolour piece was done as a reflection to my first hospitalization.

    I watched life pass me by—the leaves changing as the seasons turned from autumn to winter to spring to summer—inside from my window. It truly hurts thinking about everything I missed, being forced to observe what would have been momentous milestones from the sidelines, and how isolating and punitive this felt. They took away the most important thing to me under the guise of care and safety, and I am never able to get it back.

    I wish my rights were explained to me in a way I understood, including access to a review panel. I wish there was more oversight regarding the length of admissions, and how important it is to stay connected with community.

Amy Frank

  • This piece was created while in hospital as I didn't feel believed when I stated that some of the treatments I’ve received for my mental health have been traumatic. Seclusion in particular is traumatic to many whom experience it, as well as to others whom have to witness those experiencing it, including staff. We need to find a better way. When people would rather be dead than hospitalized, there’s obviously something wrong being done in the way we’re treating mental illness.

Illuminating Journeys Participants

  • This piece was a collaboration between Schoena and another participant.

    This picture was just clouds at first. My friend told me she knew someone who who grew up in a refugee camp and until she was 11, and thought the sky had lines on it because she had only seen it from inside a fence. We added lines and this picture represents not being able to see the sky or feeling fenced in at the hospital.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • This is a sketch of a fellow patient with long long black hair pulled back, light brown skin, holding a hand-drum.

    I added the medicine wheel behind them to represent the more balanced perspective that a holistic, trauma informed and experiential based approach would bring.

    I didn't speak to this other patient and my drawing isn’t good enough to capture their identity but during music therapy session, one of the few opportunities we had on the unit to participate in something meaningful, I looked over to see this person drumming and asked if I could capture it.

Amy Frank

  • I don’t think spirituality should be seen as a mental illness.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • Another sketch of a patient who inspired me during my hospitalization by writing me a beautiful and flattering poem and reading aloud to me.

    They have dark brown skin, short curly black hair and are wearing a blue hospital gown, looking down at their poem which they are holding in their hand. Behind them I put their actual poem as the background and painted the canvas yellow because in the third stanza they open saying “I’m walking through meadow, all I see is yellow”.

    This patients particular characteristics and subsequent circumstance (of being on the unit for an exceptionally long time) was again, a reminder of the value and wisdom inherent in sharing real perspectives and struggles.

Krissy

  • My feet are followed by my sons feet and the devil is represented by a skeleton and the fire is hell. Heaven is represented by the rainbow in the skies and the tree is my family tree.

Celeste

  • These are images that depict struggle, depression and that capture mental and psychological distress along with images that depict a person various possible remedy’s. The hospital has medications as their only possible solution and they forget all other aspects of mental well-being and health.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • All of my pictures are something from nature because in the hospital there is absolutely no access to outside which is a basic need of being mentally healthy. This picture is of water/ a river.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • 2 clowns, both with light beige complexions, face one another directly and with serious expressions denoting some sort of tension, (depicted here as a differential in social status by dressing one in hair curlers and perfect makeup and the other with smudged makeup and a deflated balloon hat).

    Clown also evoke responses of mockery and fear; reactions that psychiatry perpetuates, by responding to atypical experiences and behaviours through labels, punishment, incarceration and suppression.

    I wanted to speak to the importance of voices of lived experiences ,which are silenced in the system. Because clowns celebrate divergence they speak to the potential of atypical experiences being celebrated and mobilized through valuing of voices of lived experience in our mental health system.

Krissy

  • This is a picture that deals with fact that I spent time in both hospitals colony farms and VGH. They had benches and a basketball court in colony farms and VGH they put me in seg. without a blanket or clothes.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • This submission is a journey through mental illness with the intersection of violation of human rights and dignity through a series of Haiku method of poetry adapted to tell the story of my experiences of hospitalization.

    Text in this piece:

    Vulnerable me.

    Pills forced into me – swallow please.

    Reality fades.

    You harm to help me.

    I wither under your rough touch

    I become smaller.

    Hollowing. Empty

    Depraved. Ravaged Me.

    Shattered surrender.

    I disappearing.

    My fate - all up to you now.

    Be kind. I quiver.

    Is this my wellness?

    I can't imagine it is.

    It is bleak. Hopeless.

    Violated me.

    Angry me. I suffer in silence.

    Darkness falls inside.

    I am left with wounds.

    Marked by your nurturing ways.

    In time, I am scarred.

    Marks remain on me.

    Weathered and withered my body.

    As they shape and morph.

    Maybe I can heal.

    But I will never forget

    The pain ever deep.

    I survived. I rise.

    Standing more resilient.

    My voice loud with truth.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • "Symbiosis"

    This was taken as a reflection during the project.

    I am constantly reminded and in awe of the resilience found in nature, how the trees stand tall through weather and storm.

    I wish nature and access to the outdoors was incorporated into inpatient treatment, even if that simply means passes to stand on the other side of the door. I think we underestimate the healing and grounding offered—fresh air shouldn't be used as a reward.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • "Paths to Recovery"

    The colored lines represent different pathways up the mountain of recovery. There isn't a single correct pathway. There are many routes and they can twist and turn and intersect. It sometimes feels like the system thinks there is a correct path to recovery based on the tool it depends most on, instead of providing support for multiple paths and recognizing that people for whom other paths are the best route can still really need and deserve help and support. I'd like to see a system that exhibits flexibility and client centeredness and can offer support for multiple routes to recovery: a system that supports self-determination by maximizing meaningful and significant choice.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • This picture started by accidentally dropping paint on the canvas so I decided to make salmon eggs as a salmons journey to lay their eggs is symbolic of taking a spiritual journey. There is no acknowledgement of this aspect of mental health in the psychiatric system, everything is seen as a biochemical imbalance which is one way but many symptoms of mental health are subconscious issues we have that would benefit from therapy or a number of spiritual and emotional healing activities.

Celeste

  • The hospitals low bar for creating a therapeutic atmosphere contributes to a lowered appreciation anyone can have for any potential benefits the hospital or medication does have. For most, going for a cigarette is the healthiest activity in a day because at least you aren’t pacing the halls but going outside.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • “Seen Through a Lense”

    When I came into contact with the mental health system and was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia, I felt like people who knew this label were not really seeing me for who I was anymore. Instead, they were seeing me through the lens of schizophrenia. They were seeing me through a filter of deficit focused preconceptions and generalizations that accompany that label. I felt like I was being boxed in. You will notice in the image that the box forming around me is darker and clearer than the figure inside, which represents me.

    I think it’s important to remember that no one has every single symptom associated with the mental health label they receive. People also have different life experiences, so, two people with the same diagnosis can be quite different from each other. We also have different strengths not reflected in our labels. Does every worker really need to know my label????

Amy Frank

  • Amy wrote The Dragon’s Daughters in 2020. It’s a long poem that speaks to her mental health journey.

    Text in this piece:

    "It doesn’t matter where I go

    When I don’t fit in, it always shows.

    When my emotions induce hurricanes,

    a traumatized society deems me insane.

    They never looked beneath the sea.

    They fed me stories about chemistry.

    They filled my body with toxicity.

    Rarely asking what happened to me…

    They offered me a world with no control

    They took my power and gave me pills.

    No one knew this. It’s not their fault.

    People can’t know

    what they were never taught.

    I also know that what will be, will be

    And that every step I’ve taken

    is part of the journey.

    That being said, there is room

    to grow.

    If Western and Holistic merged

    We’d heal people, you know.”

Krissy

  • Made this as an after fact of my life dealing with the mental health issues and it's my house I see myself living in.

Krissy

  • This has to deal with me and my hands that are pink and the city that surrounds me in multicolored buildings and shapes that I see.

Celeste

  • The remedy simpler what you think.

Schoena

  • I feel the hospital has no colour and feels dead and depressing and I would like if there were a garden or if the walls were colours I like, such as pink, neon, light blue, yellow and lime green, gold and silver.

Amy Frank

  • Psych patients should be able to appoint someone else to be in charge of their medical decisions when they are deemed not of right mind to make the decisions themselves. The power should not be handed to psychiatrists / the medical institution.

Celeste

  • These are peaceful images and images of nature convey a meditative or mindful state of mind.

    In the hospital I did yoga daily and led a group of people in doing yoga and many of them said this was healing. The activities on the unit do not include any physical activity or mindfulness.

    I do yoga, aromatherapy and use herbal remedies in my daily life and so being in the hospital is a step down for me self-care wise.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • I am not the most skilled artist so I chose to do something that was more abstract to show the basic feeling of nature. This one is representing trees/ plants/ greenery and could suggest a garden for patients. There actually is a rooftop garden at one hospital and that is enjoyable if they allow you out on a pass or if a volunteer is available to accompany you. Drug users get fewer passes because they are afraid you will use so we are more often reliant on a volunteer.

Illuminating Journeys Participant

  • This is a clown collage, I took a classical looking portrait of a this early 20th century woman and used paints to turn her into a clown by painting her face white and adding a red clown nose and dyeing her hair red. I had just recently started incorporating clowning into activism before this hospitalization and I spent much of my time creating clown art on the unit.

    Like mental illness, the clown has connotations of madness/ extreme expression of moods and disrupting social norms. I’m not sure if I am making a statement about psychiatry here but people’s reactions to clowns are often extreme and polarized, from laughing out loud, to hate and fear, a reaction that is mirrored when involuntary hospitalization comes up so, that could be a message.

    The clown image was expressive of some part of my identity with mental illness I was incorporating at the time.

Advocating for Change

As part of the project, people with lived and living experience of detention and involuntary treatment met and during some sessions they shared changes that they would like to see in BC’s mental health system and mental health law. A summary of those changes is below. To see more in-depth suggestions, please read the written descriptions of the art pieces done by them and reflect on the works above.

  • There are many ways to support wellness:

    • People may have different cultural and spiritual practices that promote wellness that should be respected, encouraged and allowed to be engaged in. These practices and beliefs should not be pathologized; instead, they should be supported.

    • People with lived experience reported that lack of alternatives hindered their wellness. Everyone has their own experience, their own ways of healing, and their own ideas of wellness. Forcing everyone into a single type of treatment without having alternatives that may better support them does not support their health, it forces compliance that may instead be traumatic.

    • People with lived experience want nature incorporated in treatment in some way. A lack of time outside or connection with nature not only impedes varying cultural practices, but it also makes treatment feel punitive instead of healing. We often encourage people to go outside for their mental wellness, so why is something like this only provided as a reward, if it’s provided at all?

      • Many people with lived experience in the project wanted to see accessing nature to support wellness encouraged instead of using as a reward for compliance that must be earned.

    Many things beyond the hospital are required to support wellness:

    • People with lived experience who participated in the project wanted to see access to therapeutic counselling, not just a psychiatrist. They reported that frequently they had no counselling access, only pills and a psychiatrist.

    • There is not enough resources overall, both inside and out of involuntary treatment.

    • People with lived experience who participated in the project reported trauma-informed services are needed.

    • The mental health system must understand that separating people from community and cultural practices, with limited or no way to connect, does not support wellness.

    • Some Illuminating Journeys project participants found that the training workers had seemed to prioritize refocusing the patients instead of listening to them. Having someone listen made all the difference.

    • The mental health system needs to encourage keeping the whole person in mind instead of treating people as parts of a checklist. More supportive listening from health care workers would help support this.

  • Tied into holistic care, mental health treatment must support a person’s humanity. Some of the practices that undermines the humanity of participants included the use of seclusion, physical restraints, silence or very little communication, and keeping communication purely clinical.

    • Seclusion does not help healing and leads to trauma. Several groups, including the UN, have stated that seclusion should never be used so why is it still allowed? It should be written into the law that it is not allowed.

    • Treatment should not be punitive. When someone needs help, punishment does the opposite.

    • People with lived experience who participated in the project want to see an end to the use of pathologizing and stigmatizing language. It does not help health care workers see people as human beings, it removes compassion, and it can negatively impact how people perceive their own experience. Pathologizing language tends to be deficit-focused and leads to people being seen only as their as their label or diagnoses and not as a whole person. Everyone is different, so the same label will not apply in the same way to every person. These labels also follow people through their medical records, which can impact future treatment and interactions within the health system.

    • People with lived experience who participated in the project reported cold treatment from nurses; they seemed to be taught not to talk to the patients unless it was necessary for treatment. This led to participants feeling like no one was listening.

    • People with lived experience who participated in the project want to see health care workers reflect on the power they have during every moment of detention and involuntary treatment. Workers can counteract this by listening to and centering the person in their own treatment.

  • People should have a say in their treatment as much as possible.

    • People with lived experience who participated in the project found they had no way to advocate for alternative treatments or other services that would support their wellness.

    • They reported wanting a person’s rights to be explained in an understandable way based on the individual's communication needs so they know what their options are.

    • The anticipated length of detention should be communicated as clearly as possible, not left up in the air. The uncertainty does not support wellness in a situation already filled with so many unknowns.

    • Health care workers should listen and believe people when they say a form of treatment is harming them.

    • Treatment and treatment decisions must centre the individual.

    • Individuals should be empowered to have choice in their treatment.

    • People with lived experience who participated in the project want to see a system where individuals have a say in the power to appoint someone else to be in charge of their treatment decisions if they are not in a place to make those decisions themselves during involuntary treatment. People in the individual's life will know them better than a healthcare worker who just met them.

  • Lived experience experts who participated in the project called for other ways of supporting people that do not involve police. Police aren't trained in mental health care and can be incredibly triggering for many people, which does not help when already in an emotionally-heightened state.

This project was funded by Disability Alliance BC