Give Prejudice the Boot! |
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 Give Prejudice the Boot!
THERE IS A SMALL PATIENT IN ALL OF US! KICK YOUR FEARS OUT!
Mentalwear Ltd. is a company that designs new and radical t-shirts which
make a statement!
Themes for our shirts are, among others, mental health and substance
abuse.
The purpose of our activity is to work against prejudice and influence
people’s attitudes in a humorous way. A t-shirt is a statement for
tolerance. By wearing our shirts you can also signal everyone the state of
mind you are in!
The activity started in Finland in 1998 with t-shirts with slogans such as
“I hear voices”, “Young, free and schizophrenic”, “In an open ward”, “My
neighbours are persecuting me”, “There is a transmitter in my tooth” and
others. The shirts are sold in Finland by Mentalwear Ltd. which has a
collection of dozens of t-shirts with themes connected to mental
health.
Satu Viskari, CEO of Mentalwear, is a mental health professional (mental
health nurse) and she has graduated in 2005 from Diaconal Polytechnic in
Degree Programme in Social welfare, Health Care and education.
The purpose of the t-shirts of Mentalwear Ltd. is to make mental health
problems visible. Our aim is to work against people’s prejudices and to
build a better society! We bring these problems into the streets and now
one can be proud about feeling anxious or having panic attacks.
In our collection there are first about ten different slogans, but new
logos with new topics will become available on the web in regular
intervals. Among our themes are, for example, schizophrenia, depression,
eating disorders, anxiety, paranoia, drug and alcohol dependency etc. We
are making these shirts with warm humour - doesn’t everyone hear voices,
for example…?
Another purpose of the t-shirts is to signal that a person with mental
health problems is not insane - his/her illness is an illness like any
other, such as high blood pressure or diabetes. An ill person needs help,
support and possibly medicine. Most important is that a person not be
negatively labelled because of his diagnosis. No one should be ridiculed,
pitied or underestimated. We can all become ill at some point of our
lives, also mentally. Healthy are only those who have not been
sufficiently examined…
Satu Viskari, CEO of Mentalwear Ltd., has been working with people in
mental health rehabilitation for the last ten years. The ideas for the
shirts are rooted in this work, in which humour is very important and
helps dealing with difficult issues and situations. Also the patients in
rehabilitation are proud to wear these t-shirts.
Satu has received hundreds of messages from customers and their families,
ill and healthy, about how they think important that these difficult
issues are brought up in a fresh way. Mental health and its disturbances
are an issue that concerns us all. Patients think it is great that healthy
people are wearing for example shirts with the slogan “schizophrenia”. This
makes them feel normal. One of the patients mentioned that she feels her
self-esteem improved wearing a shirt with the slogan “In an open ward”.
Other people wear these shirts as well - but they are only copies, whereas
she really receives treatment in an open ward.
A real illness is naturally not fashionable in any way. These t-shirts are
only making a statement about problems and bringing issues out into the
open. Mental health patients will find it easier to adjust into society if
they don’t consider their problems shameful.
One of the messages of the t-shirts is that even the healthy are not quite
healthy.
By wearing Mental- shirts you don’t have to give any explanations! Come
out of the closet and go out! There is a little patient in all of us!
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