Mental Illness 10th Grade Project
In this project, our goal was to become more knowledgeable about the causes and effects of mental illnesses, and to exhibit this knowledge as art. In humanities class, we set out to create case reports for individual illnesses, and write a creative story about a fictional person with this disease. The illness I chose to research was Kleptomania
Kleptomania is a kind of impulse control disorder that causes one to feel the unavoidable urge to steal. While there is no discernible origin or cure, therapeutic treatment and regulated drug usage has been known to improve the circumstance for many of those affected. The origins of the disease maybe unknown, however it's very unlikely that someone would develop Kleptomania without having already displayed the symptoms of another disorder such as bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc.
I believe that our exhibition was an overall success. While there were certain things that prohibited an exposure of work, i.e. the lack of information that the student were able to provide to someone without their designated case report, the exhibition as a whole came together quite well.
In collaboration with another student, I created a 2 page comic about our creative story on Beatrice and April Johnson and their residual mental instabilities from their father's tragic death.