hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to mental health matters today we are going to be speaking about stigma and we all know that the mentally ill have been stigmatized for this since the earth began today with me i have a wonderful lady her name is linda crew trail and linda is an artist and creator of this wonderful project that is at the science museum i mean can you get any better than that i mean really  counterbalance what you hear in the media all the time you know of the stigma and i think that you know the way we respond to what's in the nose kind of creates that so this is to counterbalance that and i'm not going to refute that we hear a thousand terrible stories of people who happen to be suffering for the mental illnesses that some portable things happen so i want to create a project about the other twelve million people who don't do those things who are actually champions who are in the society right now that really celebrates our chance and set live with disabilities well there's this is about the twelve million people who live every day with the challenges of an illness that really can disrupt their lives but yet they go on and what i wanted to do was create sort of a segment and it's ninety nine faces it's thirty three people on the schizophrenia spectrum thirty three people on the bipolar spectrum and thirty three caregivers that love them and what i wanted to show it is is it touches every ethnic group it touches every age every economic community so in the project i photographed according to the two thousand and ten census data so that if you walk into my exhibit which is on the second floor of the museum of science right now you'll see a face that you can look at and you can sort of relate to there's there's a three year old and there's a ninety five year old world war two vet who suffers with symptoms there's twenty two vets in all and i know right now we really care deeply of that so a lot of them suffer with these symptoms but there's also to show a portion of the population that loves these individuals so you'll see loving pictures of people couples who have married families with children and you'll see doctors and you'll see lawyers and you'll see nurses l i c s w you'll see artists and authors you'll see a famous actress who  light so i was present and it took all of these pictures and for photographers work pro bono to get this work done wow and so it's a different face you walk into the exhibit at the museum of science  and you are surrounded by faces that are kind of staring at you and some of them are happy and it's it's really important to take pictures of people when they're not in their most dark moments right because the conveyance of my message is that mental illness is a fluid thing it's not other in people it's not they don't suffer from these symptoms in the same way every day they have moments of clarity they have moments of beauty kids grandparents etc in what you've done is really wonderful and i could not do it how do you think of it actually i'm an artist i went back to art school at fifty and i was painting and i had to have surgery for arthritis in my thumb and i couldn't paint anymore so i was like ok so how do i convey that message without painting so i thought well how about photographs and having as you have been a former president of the me  it i got to know a lot of individuals who live with symptoms and their families and there is such grace and beauty and you know one thing is there's no hidden agenda there really isn't  i wanted to show those faces because all we see in the media is really the dark side of horrible things and not to this credit that are not to the media those things happen right yeah right but they're usually there's usually a story of reaching out for treatment or reaching out for value are the frustration that occurs when someone has a mental illness and it's not being attended to i want to show what it looks like and what we harvest the value and talent of millions of people and their families because when a person when a child or a sibling get sick it's not just the individuals that gets sick it's despite his symptoms which were florid in his early years he became a medical doctor and has a successful practice in quincy really so there's lawyers there's there's a supreme court justice in  it is a sculpture and it's called the spectrum we're all on it somewhere so we might say that some politicians have a mental illness i'd almost challenge anyone to say do you know anyone who has experienced symptoms of a mental illness and there's no one who's got no not feeling depressed at some point in time and maybe it went over some period of time or anxiety those are the two most common symptoms right so all of us have some experience in understanding what that is and we know the individuals that have a more chronic set of symptoms you know they're dealing with a more intense version of what is the human existence and haven't we panicked at some time you know if we missed our exit a we go into this mode so you can you can sort of allying to know what that feels like foley and it's  very young lady and she was right in the middle of a panic attack and i went up to her sat down in the same chair so that i was close put my arms around her and just started talking very quietly and within five minutes she was fine and it was great you know yes she was so used to these panic attacks but all of a sudden she was ok yeah i mean it's great to find timeout for a medical reason and he walks off the court so he's playing he's the second you know he reached the finals to play roger federer and he had a panic attack and it was so inconsolably and i thought to myself what a champion to have gotten to that level you didn't he didn't win the match federer has won his eighth grand slam but it's like such the human condition you can be at that height and still  ething causes the emotions to get a little bit out of control any return to the match but i was feeling so empathetic to witnessing something on a you know global stage that anybody can have these and so that was tough you know because he's out there with millions of people watching right and he's crying on the sidelines i thought to myself oh what a beautiful fame to witness i'm probably the only one thing to witness that he's becoming you know it's such a human thing like all of us who have ever experienced anxiety are like ok i could feel know now these people they're extremely vulnerable they're extremely innocent most of them and they're also very timid and a lot of them become  victims and this has gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years before they used to be they used to throw them into deep waters and you know that that's horrible now they take they closed all of the mental health facilities the state facilities and a lot of them are living out in the street so your project is bringing more awareness of these people to society and glenn close i mean she did the same thing in grand central station was where you know beside her sister and her sister had a t shirt so they saying that i have bipolar and the same thing for people with schizophrenia the same thing from age of fresh and i think that was phenomenal i will remember you really you can get you have a few it was amazing really was amazing and i can't wait till your next one i can't imagine what you're going to do next oh boy well right now i'm really trying to increase attendance museum because i really have to credit the visionary individuals at the museum of science who took this project on with me so you know it's you know it's a little bit of a hot topic but interest in mental health is very high right now but understanding is pretty low and so they joined with me i have an exhibit in the art and science gallery and  you know they're making it available and people are coming in they go into the resource room and to find out more about mental health and right now it's been open about six weeks and they've been having about a thousand visitors a week so then you know itself it's amazing it's a different message you know it's a different message because it's scary if you have a loved one with mental health challenges yet you don't know what's going to happen and it's sort of like i'm very contemplate of space within the museum there's lots of room there's a couch for sitting down and watching three videos of people who have talked about some dark times they had but also recovery and what their life is like now so one is a naval aviator who flew the a six intruder onto the aircraft carrier enterprise person nuclear powered aircraft carrier all in the tonkin gulf during vietnam and  he rose to the into a level of high command he and then when he left the service he had a mental health onset you know the service and i'm speaking for all  a service can provide such structure you know that people who are beginning to experience mental health issues there and they're actually supported by the structure you have to get up at a certain time you have duties to fulfil you have to do something by a certain time the food is there the whole housing is there and when he came out he crashed and he became homeless and totally involved by symptoms so this is a person with a from the post naval graduate school in san diego i know exactly who you're talking about and then he became homeless and we are surrounded several times and then the value of what happened then was in tennessee which was one of the first places where they had mental health courts a judge intervened and saw that this individual was just amazing and he put him in a rehab and every two years this person is traveling the country helping vets helping in recovery he's supporting his work for beacon hill strategies and he's just a phenomenal individual if we're talking about the same person he came to me and said pat he said i have a little dog and if the dog barks and the voice is a real if not it's interesting yes if the dog doesn't but then i go into my apartment and i stay there until i feel better so that was his way of coping and i'm assuming he takes medication too but i'm not sure and i would never comment on it but a lot of people there there is medication out there for them there's medication for bipolar medication for schizophrenia my daughter has schizophrenia and she's been on this particular medication for eighteen years and this particular medication has a lot of side effects and for eighteen years when they took her off of it she would have a symptoms back anybody except for that portion and what we should just realize is that individuals are living with symptoms and they are not bothered into schizophrenia or bipolar they're just experiencing those things at different levels i mean every one of us expect ok this is a reach and this is why i'm trying to drive the conversation but all of us experience sometimes yes so anxiety and depression i think that's easy for people to understand but they don't understand that they can experience psychosis but imagine you're dreaming during the day so the dreams that you have at night for some reason for individuals happens to breach the awake time and so you are trying to live your life while imagery or delusions are a holes nations are invading your living time space your daytime space yes so we've all dreamt imagine if those dreams were pervading your space during the members that i have right with us on the side my daughter was in the locked units are keen times and thirteen times i was there with her every day and i just wanted her to be with be somebody from her family so when i would go up there i would find an awful lot of teenagers and a lot of teenagers whose parents didn't come and who wanted to call me mom and who want to sit on my lap and who wanted me to bring pictures of rock stars etc etc and my daughter was very friendly with them and i would i would see her clothing walking around the block units because she would be you know loaning her clothing but i would say my daughter is phenomenal  r you know medications one of it when it's not doesn't include the other three so it's medication some sort of therapeutic treatment a purpose in life and supports usually a friend or family a wonderful experience and i'm here all you people out there ninety nine faces of the science museum in boston and it's well worth the time to go see it and learn be