What Are We Laughing At?

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In the playground of mental illness there is always a risk that someone is going to get hurt when people start telling jokes.  It’s like everyone has their own limit of what is acceptable and what is incredibly bad-taste.  A few weeks ago UK comedian and mental health advocate Stephen Fry found this out for himself.

He got roasted on Twitter for a joke he made about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) ( see David Adam’s comment on Guardian).  The backlash began to hit.  Fry was attacked for joking about OCD  when he “didn’t have OCD”.  Apparently it’s okay to joke about an illness you have yourself but not any other.

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Save The Date!

March 28th, that is!  That’s the big day, the day of the 2012 WEGO Health Activist Awards Ceremony, a virtual event that is taking place on facebook to announce the winners of the 2012 WEGO Health Activist Awards.  In case you missed it, Canvas is a finalist in the category of Best Ensemble Cast, and we’re all so excited!  WEGO Health released a schedule of events just a few days ago:

Here WEGO!

I was sitting around last Wednesday, I can’t exactly recall what I was doing with precision, when what should I get alerted to in my Twitter feed but this little gem:

Look, we’re a Finalist in the category of Best Ensemble Cast!

Blog For Mental Health 2013

Here we are, still within the first month of 2013.  A few days into it, but it is never too late to get something like this rolling.

Last year’s badge

Something like what?  Why, it’s time to unveil the Blog for Mental Health 2013 Badge!  Lulu started this amazing campaign last year, and it caught on like wildfire with mental health bloggers everywhere.  They proudly took the pledge, spread the word to other bloggers, and displayed the badge prominently on their blogs.  You’ve seen it in our sidebar, I’ve seen it on nearly every mental health site I visit.  It has truly been an unprecedented show of solidarity.

Disabled, or Handicapped? What’s the Difference?

One of my medical school guest professors, let’s call him Dr. X, came to class in a wheelchair.  He had not used it all of his life.  In fact, he had only begun to use it in the past couple of years.

Dr. X was a normally functioning medical student with a wife and two children when one day he woke up, got out of bed, and fell on the floor.  His right side was completely paralyzed.  He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance; tests were done; and he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

Enlightenment Doesn’t Notice The Date

click here to Grab the Badge from Psych Central

Today has been designated World Mental Health Day by the World Health Organization.  And the theme of this day is “Depression: A Global Crisis”.  And with no good segue, here is my own discussion on that, in two parts, unequal in length, alike in their importance.

Part the First

A Canvas Of The Minds was born with the express purpose of discussing mental health, of raising awareness every day, in the best way that we knew how: through the voices of many individuals dealing with mental illness.

Behind The Curtain

I really debated about this post for a while.  Not the writing of it, I have come to a place in my life where that was just a given.  But I wasn’t sure if I should post it here or to my personal blog, because, while I do post pieces of myself on here, I try very much to keep things aimed more at an audience, and write pieces that many people can relate to.

Two things tipped the balance in favor of Canvas.  One, my blog is not strictly a mental health blog, and this is really more a mental health issue.