Over the course of the last two years, I have had many conversations during which people spoke about how they or someone they knew had been struggling with increased depression and anxiety since the start of the pandemic. Two years on, Shout 85258, the 24/7 text-message support service, has found that demand for their service has trebled. This sadly doesn’t surprise me. Because of this, I wanted to find a way to raise much-needed funds so that as many people as possible can find help in a moment of crisis. Out of Isolation is the result.
Susie Coreth
Shout is, I believe, a particularly important charity because their support service can be accessed quietly, privately, without the need for vocal conversation. Minimising the fear of being overheard in this way is, in my opinion, a crucial part of what they do. And in a sense, that is the same for writing: it is personal and private, a quiet reflection of one’s inner self (until it is published, of course!)
Out of Isolation is a collection of pieces written during the pandemic. Some were written in lockdown, perhaps never envisaged to be published but were a source of creativity and catharsis at the time. Some were written specifically for the anthology. Although I didn’t ask the writers for pieces that spoke about mental health, or indeed the pandemic, many of them (knowing that proceeds would be donated to Shout) wrote either consciously or subconsciously about mental health. Others, such as myself, had already written something that reflected it in some way.
Over the course of the lockdowns, creativity was both heightened and stifled. With many people trying different things for the first time, there was an explosion of new art, projects, online classes in all sorts of creative activities. Yet at the same time, I know that many people whose professional career is in the arts, found the pressure to be creative during the extended months of lockdown overwhelming.
As a writer who spent a large amount of the pandemic consumed in writer’s block, I was intrigued by what others had been working on. From March 2020, for about nine months, I only managed to write one poem – the poem that I have put at the end of the anthology. Reading back over this poem now reminds me of where my mind was taking me at the time. Whether or not it speaks to others doesn’t necessarily matter; it reflects a period of time in someone’s life. I was intrigued to see where the pandemic had taken other writer’s creative selves: what other life reflections had been expressed through pen and ink?
Writing is often used as a form of therapy or mindfulness. Sometimes writing is the easiest and most free way to express one’s inner thoughts, therefore I couldn’t think of a better way to raise money for a mental health charity than to put together a collection of writing borne from these years when mental health struggles have trebled.
