About

Hi and welcome to Subliminal Spaces. My original aim for the blog was s to provide information and commentary on a range of informative and uplifting topics that promote mental health and wellbeing.

While continuing to do this through literature, poetry, film, image, music, psychology and anthropology,I am also currently approaching the end of a marketing degree, which I followed in order to develop better communication and audience building skills to further my vision of mental health improvement for all through creative activity and social support.

Some posts will, therefore, describe how marketing can be a useful tool for social and community arts development, indeed there is a whole new field of Social Marketing (not to be confused with social media marketing) which I will go into in some of the more recent posts.

Mental health is an important topic which will continue to run through many of the posts and significant themes will address Jungian ideas in particular, as well as applied therapies. In fact creative, expressive activity as a personal and social resource is the central theme of my recent book with Palgrave, Creativity and Social Support in Mental Health: Service Users’ Perspectives, April 2014.

Another strand of interest is the wide range of self-help literature available and as I come across uplifting material I will share it on the blog. I would like, eventually, to include interviews with wise people who have fostered their own personal growth and some who have created their mental health recovery and shared their experiences through blogs, books and other media.

Explorations in Psychology, Anthropology and Creativity 

Human capacities for creativity, symbolic thought and uplifting experience are my fascination. From fairy tales and films to poems and pictures, from music and books to walking and dance, any number of activities and channels, we all find ways to express our unique selves and our human being and it is also my conviction that this very capacity for symbolic expression helps to make us the person we are and can become. It is also a key aspect of thriving mental health, in fact of all aspects of health from a holistic perspective.

Social support is the other side of the coin to the creative, expressive self and I hope this blog will serve to support others in their quests. It has certainly helped me to channel all the stuff I am thinking and writing about that remains as yet unpublished and to share pieces from the wider blogosphere and literature. Blogging has become a very enjoyable and even calming activity and I hope this little site provides something of interest to readers and fellow bloggers. I also love Facebook and twitter – follow me here Follow @mcdonneller and my CV can be viewed at LinkedIn and Academia.Edu 

A Little Biography

My name is Roberta McDonnell, I am married to Fintan and we have four daughters. I worked as a mental health nurse and health researcher, then trained in social anthropology and ethnography. My post-graduate research brought forth some highly inspiring insights from mental health service users and their experiences of recovery in the context of creative activities and social support and I have been written about this topic recently for a book released in April 2014 by Palgrave.  I love music, films, reading, writing, poetry, songs, cooking, swimming and walking. I have also recently furthered my skills and qualifications in counselling, life coaching, business development and marketing; I have also launched several creative writing ventures in self-help and literary fiction. Thanks for stopping by and hope you find the work interesting and helpful. 🙂