The month Mental health and the human experience in the arts, media and online
Art
Film
On the Adamant
At the foot of the Charles de Gaulle Bridge in Paris floats a hospital on a boat for psychiatric patients, L’Adamant Day Centre. This documentary follows the work of those who run it, and the radical approach they take when running its art therapy workshops. Director Nicolas Philibert won top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for his depiction of life on the boat for patients and their therapists. It’s also a rare chance to think about the complex ethics of documenting the lives of people with a psychiatric diagnosis, and the importance of representing them in the way they want to be shown. Available to stream now from Curzon: homecinema.curzon.com/film/on-the-adamant
William Blake’s Universe
A new free exhibition at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum will be the largest- ever display of work by William Blake, the artist, printmaker and poet who inspired centuries of artists, writers, teachers and therapists. In partnership with the Hamburger Kunsthalle museum, the exhibition draws out the influence of Blake on artists Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich, the latter having made much of his career while living with recurrent depression. If you’re up for a bit of cleansing the doors of perception, you’re just in time – the exhibition closes on 19 May. www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
! In All The Lonely People: conversations on loneliness , psychologist and social scientist Dr Sam Carr looks at the isolation, avoidance and anxiety of intimacy that fuels our ongoing ‘loneliness epidemic’. His humane approach allows this ‘me-search’ research to connect deeply with his readers. (Picador, out now) Books Sadness and hope
! The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness might be a story but its author – artist, composer and writer Matt Ottley – has infused the book with his lived experience of bipolar. Originally published in his native Australia, it’s now simultaneously released in the UK as an illustrated book and a film showing at the Curzon Bloomsbury. (One Tentacle, out 16 May)
! A men’s walking group invites readers along for the road in Three Dads Walking: 300 miles of hope , an intimate account of the friendship between three men who lost their young daughters to suicide. Their account of their walk across the Lakeland fells and the Peak District gives plenty of time to complex bereavement, and life after suicide. (Robinson, out now)
16 THERAPY TODAY MAY 2024
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