Smutsiga Glas: A photographic expression of postnatal depression

Photographer Maria Sjöö explores her experience of perinatal depression, together with psychology researcher Sara Rahmani.
Smutsiga Glas: A photographic expression of postnatal depression
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Working with photographer Maria Sjöö, I created and hosted an exhibition to explore the research I conducted during my first Laidlaw project. In that project I investigated the effects of drug and psychotherapeutic treatment on a set of clinical and psychological factors.

 Collaborating with CREATE-REACT, the Gillan Lab, NBV and Blå Bandet (both mental health charities/organisations), the exhibition of Maria’s work Smutsiga Glas explored her experience of post-natal depression and my research into treatment response.

Photo from the exhibition launch. Just as Maria Sjöö describes in her story, visitors walk along a corridor of an old psychiatric clinic.  Photography: Hanna Gabrielsson

Held in an old mental health institute, over the course of a week, the exhibition engaged audiences with a personal depiction of the experience of poor mental health with how we understand mental health within research. The aim of the project was to engage audiences with the scientific theories and research that explained Maria’s experiences. The exhibition consisted of eleven photos accompanied with a card that depicted Maria’s experience of being seriously ill. The stories were always followed by some questions that conveyed how we think about mental health in science. Similar projects by CREATE-REACT have shown this type of engagement makes research more accessible.

Photo illustrates the set-up of the photographs with their respective cards. Both cards include the same information in two languages, Swedish and English

Leading this project involved collaborating with multiple internal and external partners, managing people, and delegating work, marketing, analysing data, translation of one language to another and of complex research to accessible summaries, and website and content creation. A key aspect of the project was two-way communication between myself and Maria and how audiences engaged with this process. The conversations between myself and Maria were incredibly important to us both understanding the experiences and expertise of one another. We chose to include audiences in on these conversation by providing cards that accompanied each of the photographs in the exhibition. These cards focused our conversations in to 3 steps: (i) Maria’s personal experience, (ii) a question that provoked the reader to put themselves in Maria’s shoes, (iii) and a sentence that connected Maria’s experience and the question by reframing the science behind her experience. The aim of these cards was to have the reader reflect on Maria’s experience through a guided scientific lens.

Image of the cards. Includes Maria Sjöö's experience of post-natal depression followed by questions that triggers scientific reflection. 

Bridging two disciplines in this project has broadened my skill set and my understanding of public engagement. Understanding the complexity of mental health from a research perspective, working with Maria, and visualising her experiences has made me think differently about the data I have been working on previously. Each data point is not merely a participant but its own entity with its own background, genetics, and thoughts. For example, Maria explained in one conversation moving to a different city had made her feel isolated. Even though I am aware that isolation can be a risk factor for several mental health conditions, I started to look at data differently. Data are a snapshot in time. Meaning, no matter how careful you are with your research methods as a scientist, you can never fully capture what is truly going on for the individual. Additionally, feedback from lab members regarding a workshop I created for the exhibition highlighted that the it had made them think differently about the research that they are doing.

 I have also learnt a great deal about time management. I haven’t led a project with multiple collaborators before. For these reasons I was unsure how to structure meetings and in what order. For example, I started with having meetings with Maria before any generation of scientific questions. However, I realised that the meetings were too unfocused – it took hours to generate the first draft of questions for the first card. As such, I decided to draft questions before going into meetings with the artist and focused our conversations which we could then explore further.

The collaborations I established with the two mental health charities/organisations where particularly beneficial for the project as they helped to fund and secure the venue. But they have also agreed to take the exhibition forward to a number of different venues across Sweden in the coming months. This is a particularly exciting outcome of the project as it means a wider audience will be able to engage with the work Maria and I have put into the project, but also it shows that organisations that support individuals with mental health difficulties see benefit in this type of project.

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