"My Mind @ Bryn Mawr"

AN EXPLORATION & COLLAGE OF MENTAL DISABILITY AT ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS

A Midterm Project for Haverford College Health Studies 304 "Critical Disability Studies: Theory and Practice", Spring 2020

By Grace Toner

The theoretical curriculum and conversations that have come about during our Critical Disability Studies class times and CCW visits has provoked me to think of a few things; the applicability and reality of our lessons to the Tri-Co, how disabled individuals navigate higher education, and how individuals who do not identify as disabled may find the rigor and structure of higher education disabling. The following webpage is a midterm "mind map" of sorts; an open theoretical collage of what stories I've gathered when reflecting on this class with outsiders, which quotes from our text speak to these stories the most, personal sketches that illustrate the text, and an additional artistic aspect of a modified body mapping exercise that an anonymous student agreed to do with me. I was originally planning on titling this project "My Body @ Bryn Mawr" in order to discuss all types of disabilities. But based on where the research and conversations went, the main focus of this project is mental health and disability in the student body of an academic institution, hence the new title "My Mind @ Bryn Mawr". The title serves as both the prompt for the body mapping and as a simple framework to approach further discussion on this topic with more students and faculty alike. Although I would like to expand this project to include Haverford College experiences and maybe even Swarthmore, for now Bryn Mawr is the institution I am the most familiar with and was able to access the most informal research and information from on the topic. So, let's dive right in...

"The instruments of exclusion are not visible or dramatic - men in white coats dragging people away - but quite, insidious: we flunk out or drop out. We fail to get tenure... We find a way to get a job or degree elsewhere; or not...a sharp rhetorical divide exists between those who are allowed in and those who are not" (6, Price).

If you've ever been to Bryn Mawr's campus, which for everyone in this class I'm assuming you have, you may have noticed the fliers promoting counseling at the health center that come in a variety of forms; "group counseling sessions start today", "come to this event on dealing with emotional trauma", "free cookies and therapy", etc. While advertising services that the health center provide such as 10 free therapy sessions, psychiatric help and general "self-care" events are positive for the general morale of the student body, the core issues of many student's mental health problems are still not being addressed. Margaret Price's introduction to her book "Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life" hits the nail on the head when it comes to how the expectations of academic institutions are disabling mentally for students regardless of their original mental health status. Using the non-descriptive, blasé adjective "good" as what Bryn Mawr would describe a "successful" student to be, I incorporated Price's list of things this type of student needs to demonstrate into the art piece shown above. Some of the items that struck me the most in relation to disability studies were "productivity", "presence", "rationality" and "coherence". Productivity as we have discussed with multiple readings is the basis of capitalist society. To be a "productive" member, you have to produce consistently and within a cookie-cutter framework, and you can't produce without being present. Whether the combination of productivity and presence is showing up to work everyday and working within the rules of the space, or being a student in class who consistently participates and turns in work, this capitalist duo runs our American lives into the ground and is intolerant to success in smaller forms. It does not allow for any deviation from the norm or any type of neurodiversity even though in reality we do not all think or see the world the same. Bryn Mawr is more apt to catering to students with mental disabilities than other institutions. We have the honor code which allows for self-scheduled and take home final exams; counseling at the health center as I mentioned before is a big part of the campus' functioning; there is a certain social camaraderie amongst students that results in phrases such as "done as good" during testing times, which can be translated to "you gave it your best, if it's finished you succeeded". However, despite Bryn Mawr's efforts to be a safe haven for those who struggle with mental health, the institution still fails it's students by reenforcing this disabling capitalist framework and culture along with the rest of higher education. The following illustrated testimonies are from both present and previous Bryn Mawr students who have struggled with mental health issues, effecting their "success" here...

"No one tells you the reality of school. I didn't have mental health problems that I noticed before Bryn Mawr. In high school I was high achieving. But the reality of college is that you may have class times less but the work is more & I think I relied so much before on my natural ability that I couldn't do that in college anymore. Freshman year really sucked."

"When I came to Bryn Mawr, I came in with a host of undiagnosed mental health issues that I couldn't deal with at home, specifically depression and ADHD. The academics at Bryn Mawr and having to go to class every day was a struggle. It forced me to deal with the issues in a way I didn't anticipate. I ended up dropping out and take online classes now. I miss having a campus though."

"It (college course load) was too much. I definitely wish I was more prepared for my depression to flare up the way it did. Working full time now isn't that much easier, but can be flexible."

"Bryn Mawr makes my head hurt more than it should, in ways that are not normal."

"Bryn Mawr just seems really moody." - anonymous visiting student

"I left (Bryn Mawr) last semester and when I tell you my mental health is way better, I'm not lying."

It is easy to communicate with students who are willing to and have the ability to either verbally or digitally respond to my question. For example, most of the above testimonies were in response to the Facebook post I made, screen shotted below. I didn't specify for only responses with mental disability in academia in my post, but almost all of the answers I got were on the effects of issues like depression, ADHD, anxiety and other on academic success.

However, how could I extend this invitation to students who aren't verbal or digitally active? How could I elicit a different mode of response that may seem more approachable to a student who, let's say, used the services at CCW? I know the CCW is specifically for adults with disabilities, but let's just imagine. There are other, more visceral, creative, tangible, bodily ways to respond to academic thinking, and I think using these forms of discussion and expression represent a pushback to the cold, disconnect we see in pieces like Peter Singer's theory and academic violence. This is where body mapping comes in...

"Arts-based methods including body mapping have the potential to empower people with complex support needs so as to engage more fully in research in order to provide a greater understanding of their experiences, views, and feelings" (Dew, 2018).

Body mapping is a creative exercise that asks participants to draw a life-size outline of themselves and artistically respond to a prompt however they want to on their outline. During my public health semester abroad in South Africa, we learned about how early usage of body mapping was first introduced in South Africa with HIV patients, for them to process the connection between themselves and the diagnosis in a non-verbal way. In their paper "Complexity Embodied: Using Body Mapping to Understand Complex Support Needs", researchers Dew, Smith, Collings and Savage explored the usage of body mapping on two different topics with two distinct groups; the idea of planning with "adults with cognitive disability" and life transitions with "vulnerable young people with complex support needs", which was defined to mean young people who do not have stable support systems or homes. The results were productive, sharable works of art that helped both vulnerable groups work through and process the designated prompts in a way they were not able to do verbally (Dew et. al). Again during my time in South Africa, my class and I were asked to do this creative exercise with the prompt "draw a strong physical emotion you've felt in Cape Town". I've included my partial body map from this below. I remember feeling like the actual drawing of the piece, the connection to my outline and having the space to further contextualize and process my feelings gave a whole new perspective to the moment I was capturing.

So, back to body mapping at Bryn Mawr. I needed a current or former student who was comfortable enough to be vulnerable in this project and who also felt they had the mentally disabling or enabling experiences at this institution that I had asked for in personal testimonies. Luckily, I talked to an individual who was willing to do this anonymously. They are currently on leave from Bryn Mawr and when I met with them I explained what body mapping was as I have above. Because of their own experience with mental disabilities here and their relationship with their own body, they asked if instead of doing the full body outline they could focus on just the head area. Although this may disqualify the result as an actual body map, I felt that limiting the participant's artistic vision in anyway was hypocritical to what this whole project aims to do. The aim is to allow individuals who have experienced mental disability in the higher education system to reclaim spaces that they have been removed from because they were not able to adhere to the unrealistic expectations Price lays out for us in "Mad at School" that results in "academic success". So, in response to their question I told the participant they could represent the prompt in anyway they chose. The following image is the result of this...

Although one may describe this representation as simple in terms of it not involving too many elements, the feeling and message it conveys is complex and to the point. The use of abstract lines depicts a visceral example of mental disability; the feeling of clouded or impaired thoughts, how things like depression prevent a clear view of life and understanding of positionally in ones' reality, meaning life may seem a lot worse than it actually is because of depression. The half a portrait emphasizes the clouded idea by showing the human as still there. It invokes the phrase "half a person", which a lot of people who struggle with mental disability use to describe themselves when they are most effected. I found the artist's use of wording "worn out" to be relevant to almost every college kid's experience, inviting others who may not have as extreme a reaction from academic structure to relate to the piece. The strokes of the words have emotion behind them; the scrawling is passionate, angry, desperate to get it's message across. After sharing these interpretations with the artist, they responded saying that was pretty much the summary, including that the pink cartoonish star burst on the head represented a specific pain they would get from stress migraines in that area.

As any good research project should, this midterm evolved with the discoveries and discussions it evoked. If there is anything to take away from this it is that talking with peers about something you all struggle with is uplifting and that's how learning should be. The people who could not or who have struggled to succeed at Bryn Mawr are the same ones who made this project what it is. I hope this allowed them to reclaim academic space they felt they could not be a part of anymore when they dropped out, took leave, or just felt something was wrong with them when in reality, academia standardizes unrealistic expectations for us all. Thank you to everyone who participated and thank you to Health Studies 304 "Critical Disability Studies: Theory and Practice" for allowing me to do a project like this!

Cited Sources:

Dew, Angela, Louisa Smith, Susan Collings, & Isabella Dillon Savage. "Complexity Embodied: Using Body Mapping to Understand Complex Support Needs." Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [Online], 19.2 (2018): n. pag. Web. 21 Feb. 2020

PRICE, MARGARET, and Tobin Siebers. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. University of Michigan Press, 2011. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.1612837. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.