http://www.westender.com/articles/entry/mad-pride-brings-redemption-through-art/news-and-views/

Article in May 21 Westender by Jackie Wong.

Leef Evans?s warm smile and easy laugh are generously dispensed from the moment he begins to speak. Genial and bright, he is able to expound passionately for hours about culture and art ? especially the portraits he has painted. But a certain heaviness beneath the surface of his self-deprecating jokes hints at darker days that he has only recently begun to reconcile as part of his identity. ?I?ve suffered from mass bouts of depression for 30 years ? so, basically, all my adult life,? he says. ?It?s only in the last 10 years that I felt compelled to admit it to myself.?

Now in his forties, Evans, who grew up in Port Coquitlam and has worked as a writer and bartender, suffered a particularly severe bout of depression six years ago that resulted in hospitalization and the loss of his apartment, his car, and virtually all connection with friends and family. ?I wasn?t talking to anybody,? he recalls. ?I wound up in an SRO.?

It was during his time living in the Downtown Eastside that Evans started painting. He participated in an art program at Coast Mental Health Resource Centre, after which he started volunteering with Gallery Gachet, an artist-run gallery near Cordova and Carrall Streets that aims to provide opportunities for artists affected by mental-health issues. Since then, Evans has moved into supportive housing in Yaletown (a neighbourhood he laughs at himself for living in) and is now part of the Gallery Gachet collective. He has been making daily use of the Gachet studio space across from Oppenheimer Park for almost two years. During that time, he has completed 70 paintings.

For Evans, being part of the Gallery Gachet collective has meant more than just the opportunity to paint; the experience has forced him to come to terms with his lifelong struggle with depression. ?I can?t hide from the fact that I actually have these problems,? he says. ?I have to tell people, ?Yes, I have this problem,? and this is how I deal with it. And I think that?s a big part of it. The worst thing that happens out there is that there is this stigma attached to it.?

Negative cultural stigma around mental illness, Evans says, is promulgated by popular media like movies and television. ?It?s detrimental ? incredibly so ? because it generates notions that a facial tick is symptomatic of a serial murderer. Of course I?m indulging a little hyperbole here, but no more so than popular fiction,? he says. ?Everyone wants their information packaged in a 30-second sound bite. And any mental illness is a complicated issue; it isn?t compartmentalized... I?ve been like this for 30 years at least, and I still haven?t got a handle on it.?

One in five people in the developed world is likely to experience mental illness in their lifetime (usually depression or an anxiety disorder), but mental illness continues to fly under the radar as a human-rights issue. Evans and fellow Gallery Gachet collective members want to help turn that around with their participation in Mad Pride, a movement that aims to challenge mainstream perceptions of mental illness.

?Society has made great strides in regards to the rights of women, the LGBT community, and visible minorities, but when it come to the rights of the mentally ill, we still are living in the Dark Ages,? says Gachet collective member and mental-health advocate Kagan Goh, who is in the process of forming an advocacy group called the Mental Wealth Collective. ?People have misconceptions... We tend to hear so many horror stories about poverty and addiction in the Downtown Eastside that we get sort of a slanted perspective, when the truth is a lot of people with mental illnesses actually live quite normal lives, whether they?re on medication or not.?

SFU sociology professor Robert Menzies worked with Gallery Gachet staff last summer to hold a conference called ?Madness, Citizenship, and Social Justice,? which explored Mad Pride and mental health in a human-rights context. His academic work continues to investigate the social impact of mainstream approaches to mental health. ?Mental health is one of the last frontiers in the human-rights movement,? he says. ?The medical model, which lies at the core of biological psychiatry, is based on the unproven assumption that women, men and children with mental-health issues are somehow genetically or organically different from the rest of us... The idea of ?psychiatric citizenship? is based on the principle that human rights, social justice, and the potential for self-fulfillment should be equally available to all of us, whatever the state of our mentalities.?

Mad Pride, which originated in the 1960s, is currently experiencing an unprecedented surge of support. ?Like never before, people around the world with psychiatric histories and mental-health involvements are mobilizing to contest the institutional and legal powers of the psychiatric professions, and to demand a voice in the decisions that affect their lives in often devastating ways,? Menzies says.

Gallery Gachet is currently seeking submissions for its Mad Pride 2009 exhibit, which runs July 3-August 2. Details are available at Gachet.org or by e-mailing madpride@gachet.org