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Going ‘crazy’ was never part of Nina McCallig’s plan until she suffered a public breakdown and was sectioned in a psychiatric ward for post-partum psychosis a week after the birth of her first child. Find out how Nina rediscovered herself and chose to not allow stigma to shape her life.

 

Just a week after the birth of her child Nina became forgetful, stopped recognising the faces of people she knew and began writing on her own arms. After a series of hallucinations Nina was sectioned after a public breakdown that saw the police called out and spent two weeks in the Broadoak psychiatric facility in Broadgreen. It was here that Nina rediscovered herself after picking up a book that jolted her memory to remind her of who she really was.

 

Nina’s powerful black-and-white photography tells the story of her recovery and the frank and unstigmazed way in which she presents her experience is a refreshing and informative way of understanding mental health.

 

Nina was born and brought up in a small part of Dublin called Blackrock. After travelling around Australia where she met Mark, her husband-to-be during a cyclone, she came back to Mark’s hometown of Liverpool to start a family.

 

‘My name is Christina Alice Gabrielle McCallig’, writes Nina in her unpublished memoir, ‘but all of my life I have just been called Nina, don’t ask me why. I always said when I grow up I will become her, Christina I mean. She will be wise, successful and an adult at last, somehow it didn’t turn out this way…’

 

Join Nina for a fascinating photographic presentation and discussion on how she rediscovered herself, chose to not allow the stigma of mental health shape her life, and how she is using her photography and her experiences to end the stigma around mental illness and raise awareness of post-partum (after child) psychosis.