Do you use Asylum magazine in your teaching?  Published six times a year, Asylum provides a wealth of thought provoking material to develop critical and reflective thinking about mental health.

Asylum, Summer 2015, Volume 22, Number 2

This issue of Asylum opens with reflections on the life and contribution of Leonard Roy Frank, described by Will Hall as a 'brilliant soul' who spoke out against psychiatric oppression and inspired human rights activists around the world. Asylum magazine can be used to introduce students of mental health to the insights and perspectives of a range of innovative and critical thinkers in the field of mental health.

Asylum 22:2 is also the second in a series of issues featuring Comics and Mental Health. Meg John Barker describes the comics that have been of importance to her, observing that comic memoirs - which are amongst those - have tended to take a fairly individual approach to mental health. Where do comic memoirs feature on current reading lists? Other comics, which may not have a mental health specific focus, can be a source of understanding too.  Barker concludes that 'perhaps all that is needed to find a fuller, more bio-psychological understanding of mental health in comics is to cast our net a little wider'.

Alex Read, in the piece that follows, describes how 'in a world of rampant othering, themes of difference were recurrent in the pages of Marvel. His account - and that of Barker - points to the pedagogical potential of comics, which may have been significant in shaping students' early understandings of mental health.  This is an issue picked up by Wendy Couchaman and colleagues. Their piece explores how comics - used in formal teaching situations - can help health and social care students to connect with emotional and affective aspects of understanding.

Ravi Thornton's project HOAX combines a dark musical stage performance with a graphic novel. In an interview with Matthew Green, Ravi speaks about the growing role that he sees for comics in processes of healing and recovery. That theme is picked up by Sasha Garwood who, in her account of the impact on her of the Sandman series, comments on how the stories we take into ourselves shape our experience and reality. This piece might provide a useful starting point for exploring narrative and its relationship to mental health (both in general terms and in relation to students' own experience).

Hermann Rorschach developed his inkblot test in 1921,and by the 1950s and 1960s it was the most popular psychological test in the USA. But the Rorschach is no longer just a test; it is also avigilante crime-fighter in the graphic novel Watchmen. In her piece, Katherine Hubbard illustrates the ways in which the Rorschach is depicted, highlighting the character's interactions with psychiatry.

This issue also includes a piece critiquing the Department of Health's strategy for adults with autism in England and the non-inclusive approaches to its production. It introduces the Autistic Rights Movement, outlning its aims. In the following contribution, Mark Bertram writes about the concepts of validation and invalidation, aiming to raise awareness of their usefulness in thinking about mental health. Finally, Adrian Kenton, author of 'Four Jammy Biscuits Saved My Life Today' draws on his own experience of serious emotional distress, to argue that What is needed is 'an institutional colonic irrigation and systematic re-examination of policy and practice from the perspective of experienced sufferers'. This issue of Asylum concludes with a letter, a poem, some news items and a book review.

All in all, the summer issue of Asylum has much to offer from a learning and teaching point of view. Students could be asked to review the issue as a whole, or to focus on specific contributions. This issue, taken in conjunction with the previous one, provides a springboard for an exploration of the use of comics: both in learning and teaching, and in developing critical understanding in the field of mental health.

Subscribe to Asylum HERE - in electronic or in paper format.

Do check too that it is in your library.

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