Comments on: The Real Monsters

The Real Monsters

quin — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:15:43 -0800

Artist Toby Allen has created fantastic faces for monsters which many are all too familiar with: Anxiety, Avoidant Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Schizophrenia, Depression, Paranoia, Dissociative Identity Disorder, And Social Anxiety. [via]

By: Lemurrhea

Lemurrhea — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:22:45 -0800

These are amazing! As someone who works getting people disability, often for mental illness-related issues, I want a few of these to put up in my office. ...and as someone with mental illnesses, I want a few of these to put up in my home.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:27:49 -0800

These are fantastic, amazing illustrations that I love. My first response is "wow, these should be in a book" but would probably make for an awkward coffee table book to have laying around your house.

By: SkylitDrawl

SkylitDrawl — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:29:32 -0800

Thank you for posting this.

By: Pomo

Pomo — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:29:48 -0800

These would be great for showing kids and helping to reduce the stigma of mental illness.

By: mittens

mittens — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:32:55 -0800

One technique in ACT therapy is to hear the anxious thoughts in your head in a voice that isn't your own...for example, a cartoon character's. "Am I having a heart attack?" feels a lot different in your head, if it's being voiced by Donald Duck, say. Harder to take seriously, harder to build into a full-scale panic attack. These creatures are PERFECT for visualizing that. I am so glad you posted it.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:39:33 -0800

Neat! Great drawings; I hope he does bipolar and PTSD as well.

By: hot_monster

hot_monster — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:49:49 -0800

Pokémon. Gotta catch 'em all!

By: carter

carter — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:50:03 -0800

Thanks for posting this!

By: Young Kullervo

Young Kullervo — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 09:18:16 -0800

I don't know. My initial reaction is that this is still sort of stigmatizing. On one hand I understand the premise and it is well-intentioned enough and fantastic because we want to be able to separate illness from the sufferer and I am all for discussing mental illness through art and various interpretations in order to increase awareness and understanding and YES ALWAYS PLEASE. So this is not me being a negative nelly or saying we can't ever discuss such things. On the other, in reality, WE DON'T separate the sufferer from the illness in most relationships. We really don't. We become hurt by said behaviors and associate behaviors with identity no matter how educated we are about the illness (at least, with personality disorders, which are super tricky). So comparing illnesses to "monsters" is still skirting the edge of stigmatizing, even if it seems innocent enough. It's not as bad as "DARTH VADER HAD BPD DURP" but still...we need to understand the risky nature of associations.

By: not that girl

not that girl — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 09:43:20 -0800

These would be great for showing kids and helping to reduce the stigma of mental illness. I thought the anxiety one was nicely done and that my 9-year-old who is in treatment for anxiety might appreciate it. I had a very hard time processing the images of most of them though. I couldn't figure out what the body shape was supposed to be, whether the monster was facing me or facing away, where its face was, if any. So most of them looked less like monsters to me than like amophrous nicely-drawn blobs of color.

By: sweetkid

sweetkid — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:11:51 -0800

yeah, it seems to me more like the monsters are the person with the disorder, which I know isn't the intent. Like for the BPD one, it's like, "this is what people with BPD will do to you, person without BPD." Maybe that's just because that's the way a lot of people talk about that particular illness. The drawings are cool and I understand the intent, but if I just encountered these in my therapist's office or something I'd be a little bewildered.

By: mittens

mittens — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:32:11 -0800

So comparing illnesses to "monsters" is still skirting the edge of stigmatizing, even if it seems innocent enough. I don't know...I'm painfully aware of the stigma, which is why I don't talk about my various disorders anymore outside of some very safe channels ("Hey, you were hospitalized too! Now we can be friends!"), and I think this is actually really, really okay. These diseases really are monsters; they are huge and scary, they don't respond to treatment in any reliable way, they destroy your life...and even when they're not destroying things, they remain your faithful companion for ages. I think the drawings here could actually function to reduce that terror-of-mental-illness a bit. Get things back to the "black dog" level rather than the "gaping toothy maw that threatens to flense flesh from bone" one.

By: Herodios

Herodios — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 10:59:51 -0800

Shades of Paul Coker's "Horrifying Clichés" work in MAD.

By: talitha_kumi

talitha_kumi — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:07:32 -0800

yeah, it seems to me more like the monsters are the person with the disorder, which I know isn't the intent. Like for the BPD one, it's like, "this is what people with BPD will do to you, person without BPD." Maybe that's just because that's the way a lot of people talk about that particular illness. I agree - especially for the BPD one, whose description calls it "sinister". It's already almost reflexive for people - even here on Metafilter - to call BPD sufferers evil. This felt like more of the same to me.

By: Herodios

Herodios — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:14:12 -0800

Get things back to the "black dog" level

I don't know the Black Dog's name; when I call him he don't come How did I get this Black Dog, Lord? I never wanted one! The Black Dog don't believe in sin Think of where the Black Dog's been Think of where he's been today -- Jesse Winchester

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:25:29 -0800

I'm kinda undecided as to whether this is stigmatizing or celebratory. Anyway, NAMI has a page where you can read about and join efforts to de-stigmatize mental illnesses, so I wanted to throw that into this thread.

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 15:34:22 -0800

These are beautiful designs and art. I don't know if most of them quite work for me conceptually, though, because they're discrete creatures, even cute ones -- mammalian or reptilian. I envision my anxiety disorder as a kind of fungal colony with tendrils and spores throughout the skin, pulsating fruiting bodies in the skull and gut. There is no destroying it without crude powerful medications that destroy everything else in the body. But, you know, that's just me. Also, I do quite like the BPD drawing, because it is a beautiful creature, which is fitting for a number of unpleasant reasons.

By: Lemurrhea

Lemurrhea — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 05:08:43 -0800

Prints are now available.