Are we recognizing a cry for help? Mental Illness is a major social justice issue we need to stop ignoring.
Mental illness is a social justice issue that involves a variety of disorders. We have shared some information, stories and ideas that focus on stigma, suicide, and depression. We hope to help bring more awareness to these issues and encourage others to help bring about change. This topic is one that has plagued our society for years, but is still an avoided topic. See our Editor's Notes to learn more about the process we used to bring you the sad truth about mental illness and it's possible consequences.
Mental health stigma is a serious issue. What is stigma? Let's "Dig Deeper" into Brenda's Findings where you can find Facts about mental illness, stigma and who it effects, a Story about a man and his struggle with mental illness, and a proposal to a solution on how to fight stigma.
Editor's notes
How our issues connect
Why specific papers were selected?
Our issues connect because we are all trying to shed light behind the stigma and embarrassment that comes with mental health illness. We all share the same feelings and compassion towards those who suffer. We want to help make others aware of the shame that is felt because of the fear of other people's judgement. Many commit suicide because they were not given the proper treatment or medication needed to manage their mental health illness. We want to be their voice and hope that through our magazine you are able to help others.
Alyssa chose to share her Profile because of a strong connection she feels to the person she wrote about, and with them being a known actor, it might help to give exposure everywhere, whether the reader suffers from a mental illness or not. She also felt that her Information picture graph would be an important look into mental illness, specifically depression, that not everyone dives deep enough to learn and understand.
Brenda shared her informational paper to introduce you to the topic. She also felt her research on the subject would help you understand the issue better. She chose her profile piece to show a real life experience of someone others might be able to relate to. Her proposal explains the importance of her subject and provides examples of things we can do to help those affected by her topic.
Mayra chose to share an informational story about a celebrity who tragically passed away after years of battling a mental health illness. She follows her story with a couple of resources and ideas for the public. She wants to persuade the readers and help them to understand that you don't need to have health insurance to receive care. Care is offered through low cost facilities who offer care based on a sliding scale. Sometimes for free. Her third peace the profile talks about her struggles and real life experience after she learned why someone who she loves has struggled to stay in her life.
Megan shared her Information Effect to share what she felt was the most important information that everybody needs to know and understand. She chose to put the information into a picture format to help the reader understand the information in a different way besides just words. Pictures speak louder than words sometimes, in this project it was easier to get the point across using pictures instead of words. Her Persuasion Effect was added in to help relate the facts and information from the Information Effect to how it effects us in our everyday lives. Sometimes we know the facts about issues but we aren't able to relate how they effect us and our lives. In this paper she puts the two together to better understand the importance of suicide. Her Profile is a great example of suicide and its effects on everybody's lives. We never know when someone is hurting inside and sometimes by time we find out it's too late. In the Profile she tells the story of a well known comedian and actor that was sadly effected by suicide.
Revision/Translation/Adaptation Choices
Throughout the course of this semester we have learned how to use writing as a resource, use it to create change, be strategic, and bring meaning to our writing with varying content, situations, and audiences. Revision is an important part of this writing process. It allows us to fine tune the way we present our thoughts. Revision allows us to make what might not have started out as our best work, great. We have worked really hard to present a finely tuned and polished work. Each of our projects have been revised to flow better, work well with other projects and provide the information we feel is most important. Most of our projects have started out in simple text form and have evolved into other formats that we feel represent our information in the best way possible. For example, Brenda transformed her informational report into a pictograph to better represent the data that she collected and make it easy to understand. We have all chosen the formats we feel worked best overall.
Why specific papers/projects were excluded
We have worked hard all semester trying out different formats and genres. We did some smaller projects where we were able to play with different formats to figure out what worked best for us. We also did 4 main projects. The smaller projects helped us learn different formats and how to adapt our work to them. We couldn't fit everything into the magazine that we worked on over the semester so we chose what we felt was our best work and what would represent our topic most accurately. For example, one of the small projects we were able to play around with was lyrics in music that went along with our genre. It was a lot of fun, but it wasn't used in the magazine because the author didn't feel like it fit well with her main objective, which was her propositional piece. We didn't want to add anything that felt out of place.
What we learned
This semester's projects have been quite a journey. We have learned to think more deeply about the rhetorical aspect of our writing. Who is our audience? What do we want them to take from our writing? What is the best way to present our information? How reputable are our sources? We learned the importance of having good information sources so we can present accurate information on our topics. We have learned to come together and work as a team during our magazine project. Working as a group has been beneficial in our revision choices. We have been able to give each other advice and help each other learn how to use specific formats.
Our advice to you
Our advice to you is to make sure you stay on top of your due dates. As a group make goals and set dates you want certain projects done by. Set a date you want everything done by that's earlier than the date the professor sets. This way you have time to go through and fix things that you may change your mind about. Make sure to talk to each other often. We used a group text and we were always checking on each other and asking each other questions. Remember your group is a tool for your use.
Evaluation
Creating the online magazine was not an easy journey for any of us but we did a great job of coming together as a group to make sure everything was done and done correctly. This experience has really taught us how to come together as a team to accomplish much better things. While working in a group so many other ideas and suggestions are brought in compared to just working on your own. With all the different ideas we were able to create a magazine that brings together different writing styles, layouts and topics to bring it all under one very broad subject. Our experience with this magazine was very positive and up-lifting. We hope that it has the same impact on you. We as a team hope to bring students and the community together to realize the importance of mental illness and how it effects us and the people we love and care about. Let's all come together and help those in need, show love and compassion to those that may be lacking it and reach out to those that are hurting.
​
Thank you for reading!
Table of Contents
Everyone one of us has the ability to make a difference and Be The Change of mental illness and its stigma. Need a reference of someone whose story might inspire you? Take a look at Alyssa's Findings and her Story of Jared Padalecki, along with Information to learn of how to help, along with statistics. With your help, we CAN Be The Change and remove the stigma of mental illness.
Suicide is a serious issue that doesn't get enough publicity. It is a hard subject for individuals to talk about, so we as humans avoid the situation altogether. Head over to Megan's Findings where you can find Facts about suicide and it's effects on our lives, a Persuasion Essay on why it is important to know the facts about suicide and a Profile of someone we all know that was effected by suicide.
Mental health is an illness that is not comfortably talked about. There is shame and self blame for having feelings that are not "normal". "The deepest pain I ever felt was denying my own feelings to make everyone else comfortable". Head over to Mayra's Findings where she shares a Facts about a famous persons struggle with depression and a personal Story about loving someone who struggles with depression.