Lend a Hand — Prompt 9

For post 7, I took a look at Emma Gollob’s project in regards to Borderline Personality Disorder.

First of all, I am not quite sure what her original idea was but I think, no matter what, the switch to doing something about this disorder is amazing. I actually lived with someone who not only had Borderline Personality Disorder as well as Depression and Bi-polar Disorder. It was incredibly difficult and it makes me regret that at the time I didn’t have enough patience. Growing up, as a kid, you feel so superior to others because no one is there to really educate sometimes about topics that can make you relatable to people you sort of have to find that on your own. I think she has an amazing focus and I think she has set herself to truly communicate to people what BPD is actually like. I do wonder how Facebook and Medium will affect her story more than other social media platforms. She mentioned doing zoom interviews with professionals which I think is great. Now, would that result in curated prompts, and thoughtful responses to their answers. Almost like a debunking/unpacking what they say? I would even suggest using Youtube to even formulate a documentary style video about even a day in the life of herself, using the interviews from zoom to make her day with BPD more concrete.

I agree with the fact that our generation ignores mental health. Not because they don’t think that it exists, but I think that because everything is on go-mode all the time, we never get time to sit down and really think. I think it would even cool to see her use Facebook live, or Instagram live to have an online Q+A with a zoom professional and both she and the interviewee can talk about the stigmas and address ways to combat it. It could even be an opportunity to ask people what their illnesses are, and they can get advice/suggestion on how to practice living with it and how to stand up to stigma. It would be important to educate people on how to live with it because it isn’t going away — instead of avoiding it we have to grab it and run with it. I think that would be a great way to turn the attention onto the audience because they obviously matter too. It could be even a live meditation session for people to go and follow this meditation and release their stressors.

There is a video on YouTube, or multiple, I’m not sure, about someone showing what it is like to live with certain disorders. The one I am thinking of was about schizophrenia and it put the viewer in the POV of someone with schizophrenia and it was very virtual reality like. I suggest even doing something like that — like trying to film a more POV style video to put on Youtube or even Facebook so people can watch it as if they are the one’s living with the disorder. I think it would be even more effective than just telling people what this is for her — she could show it.

I think it is great that she wants to show how film and other media can incorrectly display mental health so she could even do a scene by scene comparison. If she were to take a scene where the disorder is misrepresented she could film a “How it looks vs. reality” and film the exact same scene but how it would actually be if someone with real BPD were to be in the scene. She could do a scale of lighter situations to more severe ones.

I think it could be beneficial to not only take interviews from professionals but why not other people her own age who are living with BPD or other disorders? I think the discussion of BPD lead her into a certain direction that can open conversation about other mental health diseases. I think she could get more responses from people our own age because it is more of an open conversation nowadays, but she could even include interviews from people our parents age, and even older. I think the baby boomer generation and older didn’t have an opportunity to truly reflect or even identify mental illness. I think it would be neat to do a montage of how mental health treatment, and how mental health has changed over time — like what mental health issues have become more or less apparent. This video could be in the form of infographics throughout the video talking about these issues and the correlating factors like finances, relationships etc.