Editors Note
Dear Public and Future Students,
Mental illness is a highly prevalent, life-threatening disease that affects millions of people all around the world. But even with a large number of sufferers it is still rarely talked about and highly misunderstood. Many assume it is a personal choice or that the sufferers should just snap out of it. And many others think they are helping just by noticing the symptoms and acknowledging them. However, being aware of mental illness is far different then understanding and knowing what it is like. Our group wanted our online magazine to finally give people a chance to dig deeper and see exactly what addiction and mental illness really looks/feels like. As a team we brought forward four different mental health issues to highlight and bring to the world’s attention. Each team member selected one specific area to research and become familiar with in order to help properly educate the public. As a group we chose to emphasize prescription drug addiction, anxiety, video game addiction, and depression. Each one of us immerged ourselves into the issue and wrote one fact based report, one personal profile, and one final commentary to show all sides of each illness. We hope that each of our works will do their part in shedding light on such a serious matter.
In order to show people what addiction and mental illness really looks like we decided that we’d interview people who personally have dealt with each specific disorder. This way we could show an insiders view while discussing a larger issue. As for our commentary we each chose an abstract image that represents the downside of our topic. We wanted to show the negative side of having a mental disorder/illness while keeping it quick and precise. Each member of our group picked a disorder that they were passionate about. All of us have known someone or have personally been affected by the subtopic we chose to focus on. We were each highly motivated to bring awareness into the limelight.
As we revised our work as a group we discovered that not everything you find in your research should be used in your paper. We learned that editing and taking out pointless information makes your paper more readable and more direct. It makes it easier for people to clearly understand the topic and the facts related to it. We also learned to site our sources and give credit to the people who deserved it. Without the papers and articles we found we would not be able to show the truth. It was difficult but we finally understood how to take our opinion out of factual reports and put it in our personal commentaries and let it influence our choices in our profiles instead. Not only did we discover our own opinions in our interviews but we were able to direct those feeling and put them in something that wasn’t written. We now understand that you can convey your opinion on a topic in many ways, both through writing and images. To other groups we would recommend picking a topic you are very passionate about. If you are not thrilled with your issue it will be very difficult to write two different papers on it and create a commentary with your opinion. Let your own voice come through but don’t over do it. Simplicity and directness will get you farther in the long run. Communicate with your group and ask them to critique your assignments. Make sure to get a lot of opinions to help edit to the final copy. And no brainer: DON’T WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE! YOU WILL REGRET IT!
We worked really hard to create an online magazine that was entertaining but still very focused on the issue at hand. Each of our assignments, papers, images, etc. are precise and clear. We hope by showing the darker parks of addiction and mental illness that people will realize the severity of the issue. All of our reports, profiles, and commentaries do their best to persuade our audience to take action and stop stigma and give help to those who truly need it. A lot of research was put into each subject/illness. We made sure that we personally knew the facts and statistics before we started writing. Only accurate and medically backed information was used in our pieces. Lastly we designed our magazine so it is easy to navigate. Each specific disorder or addiction is under its own tab. Plus everything under that specific tab was created by the same author. The pages are our own hard work and are personal to each of us individually. This is our semester work and we are very proud of it. We hope it is eye opening and life changing. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Jeffery, Rebecca, Yitian, Jacob
Mental illness is a highly prevalent, life-threatening disease that affects millions of people all around the world. But even with a large number of sufferers it is still rarely talked about and highly misunderstood. Many assume it is a personal choice or that the sufferers should just snap out of it. And many others think they are helping just by noticing the symptoms and acknowledging them. However, being aware of mental illness is far different then understanding and knowing what it is like. Our group wanted our online magazine to finally give people a chance to dig deeper and see exactly what addiction and mental illness really looks/feels like. As a team we brought forward four different mental health issues to highlight and bring to the world’s attention. Each team member selected one specific area to research and become familiar with in order to help properly educate the public. As a group we chose to emphasize prescription drug addiction, anxiety, video game addiction, and depression. Each one of us immerged ourselves into the issue and wrote one fact based report, one personal profile, and one final commentary to show all sides of each illness. We hope that each of our works will do their part in shedding light on such a serious matter.
In order to show people what addiction and mental illness really looks like we decided that we’d interview people who personally have dealt with each specific disorder. This way we could show an insiders view while discussing a larger issue. As for our commentary we each chose an abstract image that represents the downside of our topic. We wanted to show the negative side of having a mental disorder/illness while keeping it quick and precise. Each member of our group picked a disorder that they were passionate about. All of us have known someone or have personally been affected by the subtopic we chose to focus on. We were each highly motivated to bring awareness into the limelight.
As we revised our work as a group we discovered that not everything you find in your research should be used in your paper. We learned that editing and taking out pointless information makes your paper more readable and more direct. It makes it easier for people to clearly understand the topic and the facts related to it. We also learned to site our sources and give credit to the people who deserved it. Without the papers and articles we found we would not be able to show the truth. It was difficult but we finally understood how to take our opinion out of factual reports and put it in our personal commentaries and let it influence our choices in our profiles instead. Not only did we discover our own opinions in our interviews but we were able to direct those feeling and put them in something that wasn’t written. We now understand that you can convey your opinion on a topic in many ways, both through writing and images. To other groups we would recommend picking a topic you are very passionate about. If you are not thrilled with your issue it will be very difficult to write two different papers on it and create a commentary with your opinion. Let your own voice come through but don’t over do it. Simplicity and directness will get you farther in the long run. Communicate with your group and ask them to critique your assignments. Make sure to get a lot of opinions to help edit to the final copy. And no brainer: DON’T WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE! YOU WILL REGRET IT!
We worked really hard to create an online magazine that was entertaining but still very focused on the issue at hand. Each of our assignments, papers, images, etc. are precise and clear. We hope by showing the darker parks of addiction and mental illness that people will realize the severity of the issue. All of our reports, profiles, and commentaries do their best to persuade our audience to take action and stop stigma and give help to those who truly need it. A lot of research was put into each subject/illness. We made sure that we personally knew the facts and statistics before we started writing. Only accurate and medically backed information was used in our pieces. Lastly we designed our magazine so it is easy to navigate. Each specific disorder or addiction is under its own tab. Plus everything under that specific tab was created by the same author. The pages are our own hard work and are personal to each of us individually. This is our semester work and we are very proud of it. We hope it is eye opening and life changing. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Jeffery, Rebecca, Yitian, Jacob