Blondie : a narrative existential inquiry.

Abstract

Accessible mental health treatment is more important now than ever. In Canada and the United States, mental health challenges have been steadily increasing over the past several years, particularly among young people (Twenge et al., 2019). Arts-based inquiry, including narrative, autoethnography, and fiction, have gained considerable recognition in recent years as effective research methodologies across a range of disciplines (Leavy, 2018b). This investigation took the form of an epistolary Bildungsroman titled Blondie, a fictional story of self-development as a potential way to explore and understand the complex layers of mental illness and its treatment. A set of existential and narrative philosophies and therapies are employed as both methodology and praxis and are woven into the emotional unfolding of the bildungsroman: (a) existential therapy, focusing on the essence and meaning of self; (b) integrity therapy (Lander & Nahon, 2005), focusing on the client-therapist relationship, including Buber’s (1970) I–Thou dialogical relations; (c) narrative ontology, exploring a storied co-creation of reality; (d) narrative therapy (White, 1995), focusing on the reimagination and re-writing of one’s personal story; and (e) bibliotherapy (McChord Crothers, 1916), focusing on the reading of fiction as therapeutic. The current work is a creative, reflexive, immersive and interactive inquiry. It does not intend to answer any one question, but to open new pathways to understanding and knowing in the fields of education and mental health. Blondie, the novel, aims to be a transformational experience for interlocutors, providing an example of how a work of fiction might be written to illuminate the complex layers of mental illness, and to exemplify one’s navigation toward self-discovery, authenticity, and therefore mental health. I wrote Blondie with the intention of being provocative. It is irreverent and disturbing and perhaps disgusting at times, covering serious mental health issues in a raw and very honest way. Readers should be warned of its explicit content and topics covered such as abuse, rape, drug and alcohol abuse, smoking, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, reckless behaviour, mania, depression, anxiety, drug dealing and other crimes, and harsh and offensive language.