Welcome to SMHART Minds

Hello and welcome to SMHART Minds! My name is Melanie Jay Narayanasamy better known as Mel.

 I decided to create this blog as a way of sharing the creativity of individuals in their efforts to convey mental health issues and raise awareness. 

SMHART stands for "Sharing Mental Health Art Related Talent".

An online definition of "art" can be found here: 

https://www.google.co.uk/#fp=3b91cc898ae40ea8&q=art+meaning 

1. The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture,...: "the art of the Renaissance"
2. Works produced by such skill and imagination

Thus embracing these definitions, this blog intends to display, discuss and share pieces of art that have been created around the theme of mental health. This includes poetry, stories, pictures, paintings, scripts, plays, drama, lyrics, music, songs, videos, dance  - to be honest the list is endless because creativity knows no bounds! The individuals behind such creativity may be those who themselves have mental health problems or those who don't but but still wish to use creativity to raise awareness and discuss such issues.

My own contributions to this blog will be self-penned poetry, quotes and acrostics and also sharing other people's work that I come across. 

This is all very new at the moment, so I would welcome any ideas you have about how this can move forward. Furthermore, if there is anything that you would like to see included in the blog, perhaps an artistic piece/ website link, then please let me know in the comments* section of this post.

Thank you for visiting and I hope this is the start of something special. Time will tell! 

As a starter, I would like to share with you an acrostic that I created from the letters in the word STIGMA. I wanted to spread a positive message that people could remember that would show that I want to help end stigma in mental health. 

Suspend Traditional Ignorance, Generate More Awareness

I want to encourage a culture where we are willing to put our ignorance to one side and be open to learn something new e.g. preferred terminology, the nature of particular mental health conditions etc. Ignorance may arise from many factors, but it does not have to stifle our capacity to learn and increase awareness!

The majority of the feedback I have received relating to this acrostic has been positive and this makes me happy! Of course you are welcome to let me know your thoughts in the comments* section.

*Please note, this blog will allow a variety of thoughts and opinions but will not support abusive, unhelpful and demeaning comments that will hurt contributors and people with mental health problems. So please make it your intention to be nice, constructive and encouraging and to see at least one good thing in posts!