In Delhi, a two-day festival on mental-health

Project Reclamation is hoping to take back the word ‘mad’, and align the cause with disability rights

September 06, 2019 09:20 pm | Updated 09:20 pm IST

Jhilmil Breckenridge, of Bhor Foundation

Jhilmil Breckenridge, of Bhor Foundation

In 2018, September in Delhi opened with a two-day mental health festival called Merchants of Madness. Bhor Foundation, a mental-health non-profit start-up, had organised it in collaboration with Red Door, a creative platform that addresses mental health issues. Now, one year later, Bhor is going solo with a similar festival of mental health, this time called Project Reclamation.

On all their posters, the event is being called “a two day celebration of madness, neurodiversity, and human rights”, while Jhilmil Breckenridge, founding trustee at Bhor, says that the festival is “very much a ‘mad pride’ [à la gay pride] of sorts.” Their embracing of the word ‘mad’ is in line with the event’s name, says Breckenridge, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Central Lancashire. Incidentally, her 2018 debut book of poetry (introduced by poet-stalwart Keki Daruwala), is called Reclamation Song . Her co-founder, Namarita Kathait is organising the fest with her.

Over the course of the two days, the festival will have elements of theatre, poetry, dance, as well as workshops and panels, which will foster a conversation on the various angularities in understanding, living with, and being aware of mental health issues.

Namarita Kathait, co-founder of Bhor Foundation conducting one of their sessions

Namarita Kathait, co-founder of Bhor Foundation conducting one of their sessions

One of the panels this year, titled ‘Can we use sexuality to reclaim disabled and marginalised bodies and minds’ is paving the way for Bhor’s vision of aligning their work in mental-health advocacy with the conversation around disability rights and awareness. The panellists include Shambhavi Saxena, who will talk about her experience as an asexual person; Chintan Girish Modi, a queer-rights activitst; and Manavi Khurana, a counsellor-psychologist.

“In such conferences and festivals, we tend to mostly have experts, like psychologists or researchers, coming in and speaking. But we were keen to have people with lived-experiences on our panels,” says Breckenridge.

In keeping with this, a panel on Sunday, titled ‘Whose voices are important and who gets to talk about their experiences’, will have architect Zain Khan who is also bipolar; writer and founding editor of the literary journal Antiserious , Manjiri Indurkar who is working on a memoir of living with depression, in conversation with Shelja Sen, co-founder of Children First, a Delhi-based child and adolescent mental-health service.

Sen’s book, which was published in 2018 by Westland, also uses the world ‘reclaim’ in its title ( Reclaim Your Life) , with Khan as part of the launch.

Since the sessions and workshops might get intense, there is a ‘breakout room’ at the sidelines of Project Reclamation, where Bhor has organised dance and yoga therapy sessions, in addition to screening their 2-4-minute ‘Project Joy’ films on topics like bipolar disorder and depression, on loop. Quoting her learnings from the book The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body, In the Healing of Trauma by Dutch psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk, Breckenridge says that physical healing is a very important part of treating mental trauma.

At Hotel Regent Grand, East Patel Nagar. Tickets on Insider.in

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