The Big Anxiety is the biggest mental health and arts festival in the world—a cultural platform for direct engagement with mental health that brings together artists, scientists and communities to question and re-imagine the state of mental health in the 21st century.
“RAISING AWARENESS IS NOT ENOUGH. INFORMATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH IS NOT ENOUGH. WE NEED NEW WAYS OF THINKING, IMAGINING, FEELING AND ACTING—AND RESOURCES THAT ARE BOTH PRACTICAL AND INSPIRING”
Professor Jill Bennett, Artistic Director and ARC Australian Laureate Fellow
The Big Anxiety – Taking Care of Mental Health in Times of Crisis
Bloomsbury
This book takes a creative approach in examining one of the biggest crises of our time: that of mental suffering, distress and anxiety. By bringing together essays and dialogues from thinkers and artists across a range of disciplines, it re-imagines approaches to crisis, support, and care. Amid growing recognition that mental health is not only the province of psychiatry and the health sector, but a concern for the whole community, the book opens up critical new ways of thinking about our internal lives and the forces that affect them.
The book significantly advances the way we think about cultural responses to mental health and the understanding of the struggles of inner life. Featuring both theoretical and practical examples of the value of using imagination in response to trauma, anxiety, and depression, The Big Anxiety shows how creativity is not a luxury, but a means of survival.