DJ Jaffe, mental health advocate, author, dies

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (34) ◽  
pp. 8-8
Author(s):  
Osizwe Raena Jamila Harwell

Chapter two provides an in-depth discussion of Bebe Moore Campbell’s activism as a mental health advocate from 1999-2006 based on interviews with colleagues, family, and friends. It narrates her personal struggle with a daughter who is bipolar and the proactive stance that she took to cope with this difficulty. The chapter reveals how her involvement in the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), her role as a national spokesperson, and her local activism sparked the birth of the NAMI-Urban LA chapter, serving black and Latino communities. Campbell and a group of black women concerned about their children with mental illness effectively addressed the practical needs of families of color by challenging stigma, lobbying for social policies, and providing information, support, and resources both locally and on a national stage. Considering gendered racial communities as the resource and landscape for much of Campbell’s work, it appears that she maintained a broad friendship circle beyond the Black Action Society and NAMI- Urban LA. Exploring this primarily female “embedded friendship network” further evidences Campbell’s commitment to community and family and broadens context of her activism, writing, and life trajectory.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-111
Author(s):  
Gaston Franssen

Using the threatened yet ultimately reconfirmed celebrity status of pop singer and mental health advocate Demi Lovato as a case study, this article analyzes how celebrity health narratives reflect and produce a neoliberal ideology of individuality in the context of mental health care. It is argued that Lovato has successfully rebranded herself as the embodiment of achievement, self-improvement and confidence by embracing her diagnosis with bipolar disorder and other mental health struggles. Furthermore, the article demonstrates how her celebrity health narrative has been repackaged and reproduced by the merchandizing industry, providing general lifestyle advice about the value of ongoing self-improvement. This convergence between the ‘sickscape’ of mental illness and celebrity culture can be understood as a ‘celebritization of self-care’, which reproduces a hyper-individualized, neoliberal and distinctly gendered ideology of meritocracy, and presents all forms of achievement, including recovery from mental illness, as the result of competitive individualism.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Newbigging ◽  
Julie Ridley ◽  
Mick McKeown ◽  
Karen Machin ◽  
Konstantina Poursanidou

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