Concentration Statement

I hope to become a psychiatrist. Mental disorders have always intrigued me and I feel they are often misunderstood. I created an abstract body of artwork that explores scientifically what is going on in the brain and body when one suffers from mental illness. When people look at abstract pieces, they may have difficulty understanding it. When a mentally ill person is observed, the reason for their actions is unclear. After learning the scientific causes, you start to understand their behaviors.

The intent of my work is to make the viewer curious and confused. Each piece depicts a different mental disorder. Borderline Personality is an abstracted brain, suffering from abnormalities, resting on broken shards, representing unstable relationships caused by this disorder. Schizophrenia is shaped like a prefrontal cortex with repetitive bumps, showing positive symptoms and the negative space for negative symptoms. Dementia is caused by Huntington’s disease, shown by the breakdown or melting of nerves, leading to disorientation. Bipolar Disorder is a cycle of mania (light) and depression (dark) caused by hormone irregularities, shown through repetitive bumps. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is the desire to be perfect, depicted by the sphere, when tempted by urges, shown through the spiked receptor base. Dissociative Identity Disorder is an abstract tree, meant to represent the environmental causes, with different colored coils, representing the different alters a person would have. In Chronic Depression, the two proportionate pieces show a healthy hypothalamus and a hypothalamus with depression, caused by stress which is shown by the ridges. PTSD shows the progression of an amygdala from healthy to hyperactive (from left to right) which causes paranoia and dark thoughts.