Naming the Beast

I'm so very close to finishing this body of work that it's come to the point where I need to think of a name. For my Batchelor's degree final project I simply combined the names of all three children books however I'm not sure Generalised Anxiety Disorder combined with Depression makes a solid title.

A good title helps give an overview of the project. It works very much like a book title and can entice or repel. Obviously I want to entice. But nothing seemed to fit.

The subject of poor mental health lends itself to many titles but non seem fitting so I turned to literature quotes centred on mental health:

"I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil."

—J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King

"There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can't, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having."

―Sir Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

―Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

As poignant as these are, they don't encompass what I want to convey. So I moved on to titles other artists had used, looking at Kirsty Mitchell and Sophie Calle (two practitioners who have drastically shaped the critical underpinning of my Master's):

Wonderland - Kirtsy Mitchell

Exquisite Pain - Sophie Calle

These names were punchy and described what the work was. So from this I knew the name I chose needed to be concise, far more so than the quotes from literature, but still convey the message of the work. So what are the messages?

Hope. Survival. And that the sufferer is not alone.

At this point, I looked at the whole project again. I had worked alongside sufferers to transcribe their experiences. Together.

Linking this with the above I came up with the name "You Are Not Alone." I felt this communicated the project and it's aims well, whilst being concise and catchy.

So that's what I've named it.

You Are Not Alone