The Art That Will Change How You See Mental Illness Forever with Matt Ottley

💬 “When I’ve been really unwell, I lose the ability to understand spoken language. But what happens is I hear music with crystal clarity in my mind.”

Did you know that bipolar disorder can fuel intense creativity?

We often fear complex mental health issues - words like psychotic and mental are regularly used to describe villains across TV and film. But this stigma and prejudice is not just inaccurate, it also fails to account for the wide range of lived experiences of people with these conditions.

Capturing what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder, Matt Ottley has done the seemingly impossible. His multimodal work The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness explores his own experiences with the condition through a book, poem, orchestral arrangement and film. And it’s stunning.

In this episode, you will learn:

➡︎ The link between mental health disorders and creativity - and why we shouldn’t romanticise this connection.

➡︎ Why exactly Hollywood and media portrayals of mental health can be so damaging.

➡︎ How Matt came to create his stunning masterpiece following a series of severe psychotic episodes.

➡︎ How Matt hopes his journey will inspire and help others like him.

Find out more about Matt and his project here. 

Copies of Matt’s book, The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness, are available at all good bookstores in the UK.  

Your host is inkjockey founder Mark Heywood.

Behind The Spine is an inkjockey production and the audio accompaniment to The Writing Salon. Sign up for the newsletter here.

You can buy copies of our anthology series here. 

You can view the full transcript here.

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