Art is being used as a therapeutic tool more and more often — but artists are faced with a higher probability of mental illness than the general population.
anxiety
Recently accepted to the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Science to study animal behaviour, the McDonald’s raccoon landed on campus this Thursday to figure out if U of O campus life is a good fit for him. But the visit left the raccoon, and students, questioning whether the U of O is truly the caring and inclusive campus it claims to be.
When it comes to chronic pain, mental and physical illness are often inextricably linked.
Research underway at the U of O finds 27 per cent of employees take a leave of absence, most often because of work overload.
The federal labour relations board says a former public servant and University of Ottawa graduate was wrongfully terminated for working as a teaching assistant at the university while on sick leave for an anxiety disorder.
Your questions on mental health, answered.
It was the stagnancy, the lack of urgent work to do in addition to the lack of people around me to distract me from the lack of work to do. I was like an ant plucked from its well-oiled colony, placed in a virtually utopian habitat. And it completely and utterly stressed me out.
“We need to talk about the other end of the spectrum—the people who throw themselves into school or work or sports as a way of coping with their anxiety or depression or to fend off panic attacks or flashbacks.”
Some people believe these illnesses are simply bad habits that can be controlled, if only the person could exhibit just a little more “willpower” or “self-control.” Anyone with a BFRB will tell you that their illness is anything but a choice and that recovery has nothing to do with willpower.
“With my own research, we’ve gone in and said we can’t just talk about the negative, we have to see what’s the positive, because if there’s nothing good about this, why are people doing it as much as they are? There’s obviously something good about it.”