Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Mindscapes Gala Art Benefit
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Wendy Tulman is one of the most courageous women I have ever met. She has turned a traumatic, heartbreaking experience into a source of support and hope for others. She has shined a compassionate light on the dark, distorted realm of depression and helped illuminate a path toward treatment for many within and way beyond her circle of acquaintances.
Almost five years ago Wendy’s father went to see his doctor because he had been feeling down. He was diagnosed with depression and prescribed a low-dose anti-depressant. Five days later Wendy’s mother and sister experienced the unthinkable. Their husband and father was gone, and they had no idea why.
Wendy says her family was left in a state of shock. “We knew nothing about depression.” The only way she knew how to get through it, she explains, was to turn her grief into a quest for knowledge. As she learned more about the socially misunderstood disease, and began to realize how many people were suffering in silence, she looked for ways to share that knowledge with others.
A graphic designer, Wendy started creating calendars to raise money and awareness. She recruited artists to donate work and collected educational material from psychiatrists. She sold the calendars at bookstores and caught the attention of local newspapers. She raised a lot of money for depression, but she wanted to do more.
“I wanted to do a gala, and everyone said ‘You can’t have a gala for depression!’”
Wendy took her knowledge, her passion and her ideas to MA General Hospital whose Department of Psychiatry has earned the #1 ranking in psychiatry from U.S. News and World Report for the last 12 years in a row. It was through department heads Jerry Rosenbaum and Maurizio Fava that Wendy met Stacy Sweeney, a fellow advocate who had also suffered a family loss due to depression. Before long, a gala was born.
Embracing the significant ways art and the treatment of psychiatric illness fit together, Wendy, Stacy and committee members have created Mindscapes, a major, art-filled event with the goal of raising awareness and research funds for depression and other psychiatric illnesses. The first event, held in 2005, raised over $100,000. This year over 62 artists have donated their work for the silent and live auctions, and more than 500 guests are expected to attend. To see a slideshow of the art, click here.
Money raised will go to different areas within the Department of Psychiatry. Wendy’s area of special interest is educating physicians about the signs and symptoms of depression and the necessary precautions needed to be taken when prescribing anti-depressant drugs to patients.
If you or someone you know struggles with depression or other psychiatric illnesses, consider attending the MINDSCAPES gala. It’s more than a party, more than a fundraiser, it is a coming together of experts, patients, family and supporters who recognize that the more light is shined on this internal darkness, the fewer families will be left struggling to come to terms with the losses Wendy, Stacey and so many others have endured. “There is a natural marriage between the two things,” Wendy says of art and depression. “Art can change the way we see the world, it can help us see new things, or see the old things in new ways.”
Mindscapes
A Gala Benefit
For the Dept. of Psychiatry Massachusetts General Hospital
Saturday, November 3, 2007
InterContinental, Boston
*For more information, and to purchase tickets to the event, visit http://www.mghmindscapes.org.
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