Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness

The UNC Department of Psychiatry and the UNC Schizophrenia Treatment & Evaluation Program will host the 2009 fall opening of “Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness,” from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15, on the third floor of the N.C. Neurosciences Hospital at 101 Manning Drive on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. For additional information, contact Tana Hartmann at (919) 843-7971 or thartman@med.unc.edu.

Brushes With Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness is an award-winning patient art gallery located on the third floor of the NC Neurosciences Hospital in the halls approaching the psychotic disorders inpatient unit. The psychotic disorders inpatient unit is a part of the UNC Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program (STEP), which provides inpatient and outpatient care for patients dealing with psychotic symptoms or illnesses such as schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. The gallery features the artwork of former STEP inpatients, current STEP clinic and the new Community Mental Health clinic outpatients, as well as clients from Club Nova, a local (Carrboro) clubhouse for the mentally ill.

The Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program is a specialty clinical program in the Department of Psychiatry in the UNC School of Medicine. It consists of a specialized inpatient unit in the Neurosciences Hospital, an outpatient clinic, and the Brushes with Life art gallery.

Media contact: Tom Hughes, (919) 966-6047, tahughes@unch.unc.edu. This post is from the UNC School of Medicine web site.

Theater Piece on Mental Illness at UNC Memorial Hall

Carolina Performing Arts will be hosting Low, a theater piece by Rha Goddess on the mental health system, on Friday, October 2, 2009 at 8pm at UNC's Memorial Hall.

What is insanity? This bitingly articulate and emotionally riveting multidisciplinary solo theater piece fuses poetry, music and prose to explore the mythology, stigma, fear and confusion surrounding mental illness. Furious, funny, dark and hopeful, Low is an unflinching portrayal of a vibrant young woman's all-too-common journey through the mental health system. A pioneer performance/recording artist, writer, poet and social activist, Rha Goddess is known for her unique blend of soulful melody, spoken word consciousness and hip-hop energy.

Tickets for this performance and all others for the 2009-2010 season are available at the Carolina Performing Arts web site.

Student tickets are $10.00. Note that some performances for 2009-10 are already selling quickly and have limited availability (e.g., Sonny Rollins, Ravi Shankar, Béla Fleck, Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca, The Blind Boys of Alabama, the London Philharmonic Orchestra).

The Khmer Rouge Trials and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

The theme for the August 5, 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association is violence and human rights. Dr. Jeffrey Sonis, a faculty member in the Departments of Social Medicine and Family Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, is the lead author on an article entitled: “Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Disability in Cambodia: Associations With Perceived Justice, Desire for Revenge, and Attitudes Toward the Khmer Rouge Trials” (JAMA. 2009;302(5):527-536).

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, with support from UNAKRT (or United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials), is currently prosecuting some of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge (or Democratic Kampuchea), who perpetrated mass-violence and genocide from 1975-1979, when an estimated 1.7 million people were killed—one-fifth of the population.

Sonis and co-authors have investigated whether the Cambodian tribunal, which was empanelled in 2006, and subsequent trials have elicited symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and disability among adult Cambodians. A national survey conducted between December 2006 and August 2007 found that 14.2% of respondents over 35 suffered from probable PTSD. Although most Cambodians hoped the trials would promote justice, 87.3% in the same age group felt the trials would create painful memories. Sonis et al. state that a longitudinal study will be necessary to determine whether the Khmer Rouge trials will result in the reduction of symptoms of PTSD due to increased feelings of justice or increase symptoms due to the revival of traumatic memories in survivors. Further information on the study is available on the UNC School of Medicine’s web site; the entire study is available to subscribers on the JAMA web site.

Other resources of related interest include the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University, and finding aids to archival collections on the Khmer Rouge housed at Cornell University Library: Guide to the Cambodia Documentation Commission Records, 1985-1990 and Guide to the Tuol Sleng Confessions and Photographs, 1991-1993.

Note: The video above was produced by the UNC Medical Center News Office, which has a video library available online. Videos are also accessible via the School of Medicine's YouTube channel.