Photography and Mental Health

I generally aim to shoot no more than 20 weddings in a year. That leaves me free for other projects like Golden Wedding Anniversaries and other special occasions. It also means I can commit a week twice a year to a charity or community  event. Last year I managed to fit in a 5 day event for kids in Cabramatta, a Village Fair at a Retirement Home and a couple of Christmas Carols services.

The variety keeps me fresh and more than compensates for the loss of income, and doing these voluntary assignments is good for me and for the community. To me, the most important of these "community services" is the photography competition which I have organised and run for the past 5 years for the Senior Mental Health Nurses Committee in south west Sydney. Sadly, the Committee was disbanded last year due to  reorganisation of the State Health Service.

The competiton might well have ended too, except for the urgings of many interested parties. Instead, Practicaps Photography and Imaging (Practicaps Weddings) will continue to sponsor the contest at least for 2010 with the support and involvement of Odyssey House and the GROW Residential Rehabilitation Community. I'd be more than happy to have other community organisations and individuals get involved.

The competition has nothing to do with wedding photography, of course: it  is a mental health promotion, designed to focus people's minds on positive qualities that support good mental health. We have tied it to Mental Health Week, which is celebrated each October, and to the theme of MH week, which for the last 3 years has been Resilience. This year we want entrants to use their cameras to illustrate a particular aspect of resilience:  the idea that getting or staying connected helps people stay flexible and cope better with stress, anxiety and trauma. Being connected can refer to family relationships, community activities, being a member of a club or association, friendship networks or even being connected to your own beliefs and ideals.

The competition is open to people throughout the country with a connection to mental health - Last year it was won by a mental health consumer, the runner up was a carer ( a mother whose children have a severe mental illness) and prizes were also won by health workers (a psychologist, mental nurse and schizophrenia researcher were all successful). You can see some of the entries from last year by clicking on the Title of this post or by going to http://picasaweb.google.com/DavidA.Rich/BouncingBack?authkey=Gv1sRgCP6vzObd2_Sc4AE#.