Lecture: Beautiful Distress

The fear of going crazy and completely losing yourself is one of the biggest fears people know. Wilco Tuinebreijer is psychiatrist and medical director at the GGD Amsterdam. In addition to his work at the GGD, he is the initiator and chairman of the Beautiful Distress foundation. A foundation that works with contemporary artists against the stigmatization of psychiatric patients. The foundation looks critically at political and social developments based on great self-sufficiency of patients and a society that would ensure that people who are ‘different’ are automatically taken care of. Mental illnesses are complicated to understand and to feel. Beautiful Distress considers artists to be the ideal translators and interpreters of ‘crazy’ stories. With their creativity and sensitivity, artists can create ‘tangible’ objects that are accessible to an audience that does not come into contact with madness and psychiatry every day. Art arises from an interaction between an individual and society and generates new perspectives, insights and creative thinking. Tuinebreijer will talk about the different meanings of mental illness. What does it mean to be mentally ill? And in relation to Beautiful Distress, he will talk about mental illness and art and will ask the audience’s opinion on if there is a connection between those two?

Bio – Wilco Tuinebreijer (Wassenaar, 1961) studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam. He later studied psychiatry at Arkin. He has been working as a psychiatrist of the GGD Amsterdam since 13 years, and is a social psychiatrist educator. Tuinebreijer is also co-initiator and chairman of the Beautiful Distress foundation.