Introduction
Recently I saw a reel of Claudy Greijn on Instagram. In the distant past, we once attended the same school. Now her reel brought me to her special weblog claudyblogt.nl. The next day we chatted via Messenger about her candid blog and our personal experiences with partly recognizable situations.
It gave me the idea to pay attention to mental illnesses that also play a role in my own life here – on this blog aitopic.nl . ChatGPT, text prompts and AI image generators are the tools I use for this – as with every message, by the way.
Inner Struggle and Human Suffering
Mental illness, often hidden and invisible to the naked eye of the other, is a complex and profound aspect of human suffering.
The inner world of people who suffer from this is often a jumble of emotions, images and experiences that are difficult for outsiders to understand.
In this blog post, we’ll dive into the ‘Elusive Worlds’ of these individuals, supported by AI-generated artworks that depict, or at least try to depict, this invisible chaos.
The Different Faces of Mental Illness
Mental illness can take many forms. Some of the most common include:
- Depression: A condition characterized by persistent feelings of sadness and loss of interest. It affects how a person feels, thinks, and behaves, and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems.
- Anxiety disorders: Those include conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and phobias. People with anxiety disorder experience overwhelming and persistent fear and worry that is disproportionate to the actual threat.
- Bipolar disorder: characterized by extreme mood swings ranging from manic highs to depressive lows. This used to be called a manic-depressive disorder.
- Schizophrenia: A serious mental illness in which people lose the distinction between reality and fiction. Symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior.
The common factor in many of these conditions is the inner chaos that patients experience. The outside world often only sees the outward symptoms, but what goes on inside their minds is a complex and often painful battle.
Nightmares and dreams
For many, the world of dreams and nightmares is a direct reflection of their inner struggles.
These dream worlds are often filled with gloomy, disturbing or chaotic images and scenarios, which provide an insight into their psychological state.
They can be symbolic of their fears, their desires, and the confusion they experience in their daily lives.
AI-generated images as a mirror
The series of AI-generated works added below this blog post, titled ‘Elusive Worlds’, attempt to capture these complex and often elusive inner experiences.
These artworks are not literal representations, but rather symbolic interpretations of the chaos, occasional beauty, and often darkness and gloom experienced by people with mental illnesses.
Look at them from this perspective.
Full-screen slideshow? Click on an image!
