Summary Synthesis

My interdisciplinary degree is a made up of courses in fine art and psychology. My initial goal with the major was to move on to get my master’s degree in art therapy, therefore I titled my degree, Creative Arts for Healing. Currently I’m going down a path more related to fine arts independently. I wouldn’t say that I’m not going to use my education of psychology, because I know that I use it in my everyday life. My knowledge of psychology has always contributed substantially to my art practice as well. While I’ve been at PSU I feel my two disciplines have always informed each other and overlapped in content regardless of the curriculum, which I really enjoyed and benefited from.

The overall goal of my Applied Project was to inform others about mental illness in a non-stigmatizing way while also incorporating visual art in the process. I wrote blog posts discussing common mental illnesses and created a piece of art to accompany the post and attempt to represent each mental illness. I wanted to be able to link a visual element to draw people in and connect the arts. I also created blog posts talking about “bad art”, to hopefully reach younger artists. I did think because encouraging artists to post work online even if it’s not perfect let’s younger artists or beginners know what’s realistic about creating artwork. For both aspects of my project I connected my PLN, website, and YouTube channel to create a more involved project.

My Research Article was titled The Way Bipolar Disorder is Represented in Popular Culture

and I discussed just that. I wanted to focus in on one illness, bipolar disorder while also referencing mental illness as a whole to show how pervasive the stereotypes are in our culture. I talked about multiple forms of media, concentrating on TV and film. The main goal was to show the specific stereotypes, how they are shown throughout the different forms of media, and the damage that the stigma has on the mentally ill population. It was interesting and disappointing to review studies and see how the stereotypes exist across genres.

As my major concludes, I am happy with what I learned in my respective disciplines. Even though I am hoping to move on into fine arts rather than art therapy, I wouldn’t have chosen a different path because I wouldn’t have ended up at that decision. As I stated previously, I know that my knowledge of psychology and my way of interdisciplinary thinking will continue to influence me and be a part of whatever I choose to do.