Visual communication and mental health

Abstract

This article conceptualizes the field of ‘visual communication and mental health’, prioritizing the question of how visual imagery is experienced. Taking as its starting point the challenge of overcoming stigma and the limitations of visual clichés of depression and mental illness, the author argues for a dynamic, relational model of communications, foregrounding lived experience. To illuminate the psychosocial impacts and potential benefits of creative engagement with visual media, she draws on understandings of symbolic communication, derived in particular from the work of DW Winnicott and the British Independent tradition of psychoanalysis. The imagery discussed includes stock and campaign imagery, conceptual/expressive artwork and a virtual reality (VR) production that extends an innovative approach to mental health literacy by First Nations artists.