Gold: Do you see, what I see
Psychosis is a condition of the mind where your perception of reality is changed. It affects the way you think, feel and experience the world. The mental illness can affect anyone, but the causes of the pshycotic periods can be complex and hard to determine. It can stem from stress, lifechanging events, drugs, physical or other mental illnesses. You get to meet eight out of 12 people, who have experienced phsycotic behaviour. Though the causes vary, the difficulties to determine what is real and what is not applies to all of them. The exhibition consists of two sides of the same person. One is who they are, one is a glimpse of the reality as they experienced it during their psychotic periods. Through close collaboration we have tried to visualize their state of mind during the phsycosis. This was done to give you the ability to try and understand them as individuals and how it affected who they are today.
For can you be the same, when you return to reality again?
Jonas Strandgaard
“Can you wake up from a nightmare, if you are not asleep?” Jonas Strandgaard, 36 y/o The 19 year old Jonas is admitted to the closed phsyciatric wing. A seven month long phsycosisbecomes his journey into the mental illness paranoid skizophrenia. Through the years Jonas has had several phsycoses. He has been haunted by Death, and been in another dimension. At one point he momentarily lost the ability to speak. It takes a huge amount of medication to pull him back to reality again. The medicine has a numbing effect on him and it feels like he is running through heavy waters. Today he is better at seperating what is real and what is not. If he is unsure, he uses his phone to check reality. If the phone doesn’t see it, it’s properbly just in his head. Even though the phsycoses are awful to go through, he is grateful because he learns something new about himself every time. In the nature Jonas finds the calm he needs to deal with his illness. To remind himself of the lessons learned, he has them tattooed on his body.
