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anxiety

Poetra Asantewa sul palco di Parole in folle a Padova il 15 ottobre 2023. Foto della redazione

“For the Blues”, when hope is a faint rumour

Redazione

A poem about the blues, that sad feeling that drags you down at the bottom of yourself and makes you question the sense of getting out of bed in the morning. Poetra Asantewa’s verses follow a young woman as her day unfolds and as her thoughts run one after the other. She tries to make sense of her anxiety and her inadequacy feeling instilled by society and politics, so inclined to crush new generations. But hope cannot be crushed because “Yet there’s something about the way an open wound aggregates and remodels to repair itself, that tells me that we’re here for much more than getting lost.”

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Those days blurred by the heaviness of being

Redazione

“In which I tell you all the reasons I don’t want to exist and you tell me to remember” is the poem Poetra Asantewa composed for “Parole in folle”. Here she gets to the core of mental distress. A bundle of negativity generated by anxiety, depression, feelings of uselessness and impotence. A bundle that can be unfastened by a healing voice speaking hopeful words: “Remember that life is breaking all of us, and every breath we take is the body mending its brokenness. Remember that there’s living proof that this heaviness you feel is not new or alien. It is a mangled dark monster that has been battled and conquered by others before you and will be conquered by you too.”

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Leah Gerand Soko

“A letter to my best friend” is a letter to oneself, a hope for healing

Gaia Resta

Tanzanian author Leah Gerald Soko recounts how she wrote this poem at night, her mind storming and troubled. Feeling useless and unable to do anything about her challenges in life and above all, feeling she had no one to talk to, she turned to writing. A letter to her best friend becomes the chance to open up about her innermost feelings, to face her difficulties and encourage herself to accept her pain and be responsible for her own recovery. In Leah’s words, writing has been “a breakthrough towards depression and anxiety” and it represents now a way “to heal and feel strong about myself”.

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Overcoming post-conflict trauma with art: three African case studies

Vittoria Paolino

In volatile environments such as conflict-torn North Kivu, post-genocide Rwanda, or Sierra Leone, experts and humanitarian aid workers are now employing art to support the treatment of mental health conditions caused by violence. In many areas of the African continent, people with psychological illnesses lack effective therapeutic support – left alone in dealing with the sickness and forced to fight every day against the stigma. In these circumstances, art therapy can represent an important ally to cure pathologies such as PTSD, depression or nevrosis.

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“Mental 360”, in Kenya against youth depression and suicides

Abdoulaye Coumbassa

Mental 360 is a non-profit mental health awareness organization that has been active since 2016. Among its activities there are physical wellness, counselling, art therapy, yoga and dance, all aiming at promoting mental health and emotional stability. The end goal is to establish a society where mental illness is not stigmatized and treatment is affordable to the common citizen everywhere in Africa. We talked with Bright Shitemi, co-founder of the organization, who explained us the inspiration behind the NGO and the objectives, obstacles, results achieved to date and future goals.

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