Mental health is serious, ugly, and deadly—yet we’re seeing it co-opted by brands and agencies alike in the name of thinly veiled marketing ploys and social media kudos.

Ballard says that having prominent, successful creative people with mental health issues that manifest in ways that are clearly unpleasant—and a society that allows them to be so—is a crucial yet diminishing thing for other people who are suffering. The problem with that, I offer, is that we end up romanticizing the idea of the “tortured genius” in... See more

For Maisel, one of the fundamental reasons people in creative roles are more likely to be affected by anxiety is because they’re constantly being forced to make choices. “Choosing provokes anxiety,” he says. “Most professions don’t demand that you have to make one choice after another, which provokes anxiety. Going into the unknown—even if we’re ad... See more

But, like mental health conditions themselves, things weren’t as simple as that; they were knotty and complex, much like our minds. And instead, I found myself agreeing more and more with certain interviewees at the dangers of flippant mental health reporting, and began considering how “ghoulish,” to quote one, it is for us to become unwilling “tou... See more