May is the Mental Health Awareness month, and for this reason I decided to start this project with the coolest people in town, Agnese Nannipieri and Massimo Raylegh Risi.
I wrote down some of the most classical stigmas and prejudices about why people decide to attend psychotherapy.
This is the result:
If you go to therapy, of course, you are crazy, or maybe you are in pain because you were bullied for your sexual orientation (are you gay?), or maybe it’s because you’re full of rage and disappointment. If you are attending therapy you’re necessarily a human being with no ratio, no feelings, no ability to live your life properly. You are needy, sick, pathologic. You are weak.
These are projections and thoughts that come from a society that thinks psychology and mental health are both taboo and useless.
In Italy, resources say that people prefer to take pills rather than attending therapy. But what we know is that pharmacology treatment without psychotherapy is not so useful: it’s like having a wound and putting a patch over it without disinfecting it first.
This has been said, I want to say that the most important truth about someone who decides to attend therapy, is that he or she is okay.
If you are attending therapy, trust me, it’s alright because you have chosen to work on yourself, whether it’s for you or for the ones you love. It’s alright because you are accepting yourself and your history, you are trying to indulge in the inevitable change within, which is, and we have forgotten this point, the constant and the leitmotiv of our lives.
So, in conclusion, if you are attending therapy everything is going to be alright because you started to love yourself and this incredible, creative adventure that is life.
I hope you’ll enjoy this little project, everything was shot in safe conditions, with lots of care and attention, and in a very few hours to be sure to minimize the risk of social closeness.
Mental health matters.
From an idea by Jaya Casini
Text: Jaya Casini
Video: Agnese Nannipieri
Performers: Jaya Casini – Agnese Nannippieri – Massimo Risi
Jaya was born in 1996. She graduated in the clinical psychology course at the University of Pisa, and has lived many years in the Tuscany countryside, with her mom and her dogs.
She has been always very passionate, in general, but with a particular regard for self discovery, writing, music and social psychology. She has been attending theatre courses since she was 17, and its aim now is to transform the acting into a door to open a dialogue on psychological topics such as the Stigma, in Italy, about people who decide to attend a therapy.
Agnese is a photographer and videomaker based in Pisa.
She’s always been interested in art, doing little sketches and some photos and then, after a while, she approached videomaking, starting to get involve in social issues, helping poor neighborhood or associations of her city with small video to let everyone know their problems and their struggles.
She also work in small broadcasts, but she’s mainly studying cinematic animation in Florence, hoping to made that her next true job.
