'Nuts', 'bananas', 'crackers'. The words we use to describe people and talk about mental health can have a powerful, and quite often negative impact. Step forward London-based photographer Kay Lockett, who’s aiming to get us to think twice about the language we use with her striking project, Crazy Talk.
"I started to just think about the language we use around mental health," explains Kay, 35, who spent more than two years working on the series of images and accompanying personal stories. "I think we really need to start taking a step back sometimes and think about the way we describe people. From a distance, we can quite easily call someone 'nuts' or 'crazy', but actually there’s a lot more going on there."
Kay was struck by the number of food-related words often used to describe someone suffering from a mental health issue. In Crazy Talk, images of bananas, doughnuts, jelly, nuts and crackers are juxtaposed with arresting portraits of her subjects. She describes how amazed she was by the openness and honesty from those who came forward to be part of the project.
"Some hadn’t actually told anyone before," says Kay, describing the initial conversations she had with those involved. "We focused on the stigmas that were involved and the names they’d been called or things that people had said to them."
"These words do stick with you," she stresses, pointing to a portrait of a woman named Alex, which is accompanied by a still life of peanuts. Having suffered badly from anxiety and panic attacks, Alex, 24, was called 'nuts' by an ex-boyfriend. "It really stuck with her and knocked her confidence for a long time. It made it hard for future relationships because she always thought people would think she’s 'nuts' if she’s a little bit panicky or acts in a certain way."
Brutally honest and individual accounts of a variety of mental health issues, including anorexia, depression and borderline personality disorder, are displayed alongside each of the 10 powerful portraits. "I wanted it [the aesthetic] to be very raw, as if they are laying themselves bare," explains Kay. "A lot of them hadn’t seen themselves quite that raw before either."
It has been a deeply personal project for her too: "I grew up in a family with huge mental health issues, I’ve experienced it firsthand. I know how hard it is to talk about and I know how hard it all is to deal with."
Feedback has been positive, she says, describing how the project appears to have struck a chord with people. "I even got a message from one of the [subject's] mums to say how proud she was, which is always really nice." Crazy Talk has also garnered support from mental health campaign Time to Change, which has featured the project on its own platforms.
Kay's aim with the project is to highlight the taboos, stigmas and lazily used slang that all too often we can be guilty of reaching for. "We just say these words as if they mean nothing but actually, to people who might have mental health issues, it can be quite a negative thing and can really change their day sometimes."
"If I can change a few people’s attitudes to the way they talk about mental health, then I think I’m winning."
Follow Kay Lockett’s work on her website or on Instagram.
Alex, 24, 'Nuts'
"In relationships I’ve always been labelled 'intense' because I overanalyse things, constantly worrying about all possible outcomes. I used to always feel like I needed other people's approval to feel okay or that I deserved to be here. I have very physical side-effects to being anxious: vomiting, panic attacks, excessive tearfulness and suicidal thoughts. Anxiety and depression cloud your judgment by playing on your insecurities and the corresponding paranoia can mean you end up being largely misunderstood. Being labelled a drama queen throughout my life has always made me worse, because it makes me hyper aware of my behaviour. When I’m ill, my head feels like the atoms in water boiling in a kettle, bounding off each other at a thousand miles an hour. These bubbling thoughts are all me second-guessing myself – comparing yourself to others all the time when you feel like you don’t belong."
Photographed by Kay Lockett.
Ama, 26, 'Empty'
"I'd do anything to not feel empty. People think I'm a bad person – but I'm not in control of my behaviour. A lot of people don't know how to react to my big personality and they just think I'm a nuisance. Coming from a broken home, abandonment issues and abuse are common factors among people who suffer with borderline personality disorder. I can't socially interact as I'm worried how people will react to me, which makes me paranoid. I've attempted suicide and have self-harmed – but people say I'm just attention-seeking. I first tried to kill myself when I was 9 years old and have been in therapy ever since. Feeling the pain reminds me I'm alive. I disassociate myself from most situations, try to remove myself emotionally from reality – I’m never really in the room – I'm somewhere else without emotion to stop me freaking out."
Photographed by Kay Lockett.
James, 28, 'Bananas'
"My problems have been trivialised a lot of the time by medical professionals who think that I'm bananas for making myself sick. I developed OCD and depression around the age of 14. I had missed nearly a year of school as a result of symptoms around cleanliness. My anxieties switched from obsessions and compulsions around appearance to weight and shape and I began to control what I was eating in order to influence this. Professional help seemed to focus on superficial symptoms of my condition rather than the underlying emotional distress and anxiety. I now see more and more images of the perfect male body in the media, which from my perspective has put pressure on me to live up to this ideal. It is something I associate with achievement, likeability and success."
Photographed by Kay Lockett.
Jade, 29, 'Broken'
"You feel you’re hiding a bad secret and always walking on eggshells. You get that pang of fear that the people you care for will find out. I’ve always felt larger than everyone else – surplus to requirement. These thoughts manifested themselves as bulimia, depression and anxiety six years ago after I went through a break-up. I blamed myself and the heartache turned into fierce self-hatred. I ended up in hospital. Only three people know what happened and even their knowledge makes me so ashamed. When I filled in a sick note after taking a day off work because of depression, my boss told me to change it. 'Put that you had a stomach bug,' she said, 'we don’t want people to get the wrong idea about you'. I can’t fully share how I feel even with those I’m closest to. This is the power of stigma."
Photographed by Kay Lockett.
Suzanne, 29, 'Flaky'
"Depression is a flaw in chemistry not character; everyone just thought I was lazy. When I was about 15, I suddenly went into a depressive phase where I was constantly crying, my anxiety was dreadful and I suffered from severe insomnia. For me, my depression and anxiety has been a constant presence in my life and has been something I’ve learned to manage, but it has definitely held me back. It makes me incredibly tired, so I’d come home from school and just sleep, anywhere I could. It became a bit of a standing joke in the family. Everyone just took it for laziness and thought I was flaky. Sometimes it’s hard to separate your personality from your depression, both for yourself and for others around you, and it can make it difficult to figure out who you are."
Photographed by Kay Lockett.
Laura, 24, 'Crackers'
"I had a broken relationship with my younger self. It started when I was 16. I received a few comments from men about how I had put on a bit of weight and so embarked on a diet completely uneducated about what one was. I found that controlling food quickly became an obsession. I lost most of my friends and spiralled into a depression. I would make myself sick every day – my heart would hurt, my face would swell, my lips were cut, but all that didn't matter, because I was skinny. With bulimia and binge eating, a lot of people can't get their head around the concept of not being able to stop yourself from eating, they just think you're crackers because food is food. I remember my mum telling me once to 'just stop it', which made me even more embarrassed to tell anyone else."
Photographed by Kay Lockett.
Eche, 27, 'Crazy as a Coconut'
"My erratic behaviour was seen to be aggressive and was certainly viewed as crazy. I had an episode of mania in the summer of 2015. My mood elevated and I was full of energy, less inhibited, and made risky decisions because of skewed judgement. My speech was pressured and thoughts were racing. Substance misuse exacerbated the problem and perhaps triggered it. It seemingly occurred out of the blue with no family history of ill mental health. It resulted in me being sectioned for three weeks and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It’s been difficult to find a balance since then and the changes in mood can be debilitating. I’m still trying to undo some of the damage that was caused by the manic episode. Some people don’t consider it to be an illness and think that it can be overcome by digging deep and that everybody has ups and downs."
Photographed by Kay Lockett.
Vicky, 35, 'Donut'
"You feel pretty worthless when you try to reach out and it is dismissed as attention-seeking and not serious – that you're just stupid. When I was about 13, I developed an eating disorder. I went from restricting to bingeing and purging, then self-harming. I can't really explain it – I just felt uncomfortable and afraid all the time. At work I'm afraid to show any emotion, in case anyone thinks I'm weak, that I can't cope. When I was in my 20s, I thought people would think I'm too old for an eating disorder and to be self-harming. Now I'm in my 30s and I did not expect to be dealing with the same fears. I'm determined not to relapse but the stigma of being judged and the fear of losing my new job makes it harder to ask for help."
Photographed by Kay Lockett.
Dave, 29, 'Fruitcake'
"The opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's energy. My quest to be healthy careered into an addiction. Anorexia became a coping mechanism, it was about control. I was always anxious, had no attention span and a terrible memory – not very helpful when you're a stand-up comic. I was a wreck. I now have brittle bones, went through therapy and was diagnosed as severely clinically anorexic and suffer with depression. I'd been ill for seven long years before I got help. People assume it's a 'women's issue', which leads to men being under-diagnosed. I was told I didn't look anorexic, so they just assumed I was mad. Someone said to me: 'I don't think you're really anorexic, I think you're a white, middle class male who has so much unchecked privilege you have to dream things up to make you feel special'."
Photographed by Kay Lockett.
Hope, 27, 'Jelly Brain'
"Anorexia is this constant battle in my head, this tormenting inescapable voice that most of the time I can fight, but at other times I wobble and lose all sense of control to fight her. I was sexually abused and had a messy family life. I hated feeling any sort of emotion – my parents used to stare at me and see this blank faceless girl staring back. As soon as emotion hit me I was afraid, so I became best friends with anorexia. It gave me the feeling that I was winning at life again. I would eat to please my parents, then force myself to vomit. Then after hours of sitting on the floor cold and naked, I would head to my room to exercise. It was those evenings that I wanted to just die. I couldn’t face getting up each day."
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