An Artist's Guide To A Better Mind

In 2019, Chennai artist Sruthi Mohan had started reading extensively on mental health to be able to contribute artwork for a friend’s campaign on the issue.

- Saranya Chakrapani

While it opened a new world of insights for her, it wasn’t until 2020 when the pandemic struck that the media and communications student was able to draw parallels between the literature she consumed and her own day to-day life; what anxiety could do, how it could alter one’s thinking and innocuous everyday habits that could become an antidote.

Sruthi started expressing her musings in short animated films on her Instagram handle @smores_smohan; it started with a cute visual on how she finds calmness in music; followed by another on her love for a cup of tea and a story of a butterfly inspired from her favourite author’s book — things that kept her afloat in quarantine.

Like Sruthi — whose discovery of mental health in art encouraged her to join the Schizophrenia Research Foundation as a communications professional — artists and influencers are using comic strips, digital artwork and even memes to get talking about the mental health challenges that have gripped many since the pandemic, and act as allies to those fighting anxiety, depression and hopelessness. What drives them is not just the comfort of self-expression, but also the resolve to let people know that they’re not alone in these everyday battles, and resonate with them with beauty, humour and popular culture.