Featured Member: Linda Monteith Gardiner

*Support Linda’s campaign to finish The Valedictorian – see below!*

Linda Monteith Gardiner is a photographer and filmmaker and is both tortured and inspired by schizoaffective disorder. She grew up in small town Ontario and has a degree in French literature and linguistics. She also studied piano for 10 years through the Royal Conservatory of Music. She is working to finish her first film, The Valedictorian.  She has completed a graphic novel depicting her psychotic episodes or visions, if you will, entitled, Me, At Home with the Cameras. She speaks passionately to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness and uses film and photography as a platform to normalize the discussion around mental illness in general and psychosis in particular.

More from Linda on her current projects…

The Valedictorian

The Valedictorian begins in the first year of my undiagnosed mental illness and how it suddenly appeared. I was asked to deliver the valedictory address to my high school graduating class – an honour I gladly accepted.  However when graduation night came, I gave something very different than a valedictory address.  If you want to know what I said that left the audience in a state of shock and confusion…come see the film!

The film is almost complete but we need your help to fund the post-production process.

The Valedictorian is intended for use in the outreach and public speaking that I do with high school and university students. A good film requires good production values and that requires the best in the biz. Absolutely every dollar goes towards the film’s production (I have not made a penny).  Please help us finish the film as soon as possible and get the conversation going. Let’s demolish stigma!

Find out more about the film and how to contribute by emailing [email protected].

Thanks so much and see you at the premiere!!

Me, At Home With The Cameras

Me, At Home With The Cameras is a series of depictions of how I see or saw hallucinations and delusions or visions (depending on your point of view) as part of my schizoaffective illness. In the book, I have tried to situate them in time to give them some context. Even though I am on therapeutic doses of two anti-psychotic medications, I continue to experience these departures from reality. I hope this booklet will help people understand what it is like to experience a psychotic episode and chip away at the stigma which continues to harm those with mental illnesses.

Purchase the book through Blurb at this link: http://www.blurb.ca/b/5149253-me-at-home-with-the-cameras. And check out the preview below.