The following creative project defends that, whether intentionally or not, mental illness and substance abuse are inevitably romanticized in young adult media and discusses the dangers of this romanticization. This project is divided into three parts. The first part consists of psychological evaluations of the main characters of two popular, contemporary forms of young adult media, Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger and Euphoria by Sam Levinson. These evaluations use textual evidence and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) to determine what symptoms of psychopathology the characters appear to display. The second part consists of a self-written short story that is meant to accurately depict the life of a young adult struggling with mental illness and substance abuse. This story contains various aesthetic techniques borrowed from the two young adult media forms. The final part consists of an aesthetic statement which discusses in depth the aesthetic techniques employed within the short story, Quicksand by Anisha Mehra.

The Latinx community faces several barriers that keep them from seeking mental health treatment. One of those barriers is the stigma experienced in the community. The purpose of this project is to create a culturally tailored animation to address the stigma associated with mental health in the Latinx community. The first part of the project, written about in this paper, focuses on gathering data from the community about their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors regarding mental health, as well as the stigma they have witnessed and experienced. Information was gathered through a series of group and one-on-one interviews with Generation Z men and women that identified as Latinx. The preliminary results revealed that all participants agreed with the statement that mental health is stigmatized in their community and offered several reasons as to why this is the case. The majority of them also agreed that education is the best way to reduce the stigma, which is what we hope to achieve through an animation that will be created using the information provided by the community and the literature.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a psychiatric disorder that affects 2-3% of children. OCD causes anxiety, fear, upsetting thoughts, and obsessions/compulsions. These symptoms can manifest in different ways and kids can become stuck in a stressful cycle of anxiety and the need to act on compulsions. Currently on the children's book market, OCD is an underrepresented topic. I chose to design a children's book that tackles the stigma of OCD in a form that is easy for children to understand.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a psychiatric disorder that affects 2-3% of children. OCD causes anxiety, fear, upsetting thoughts, and obsessions/compulsions. These symptoms can manifest in different ways and kids can become stuck in a stressful cycle of anxiety and the need to act on compulsions. Currently on the children's book market, OCD is an underrepresented topic. I chose to design a children's book that tackles the stigma of OCD in a form that is easy for children to understand.

Psychological therapy is the process of understanding, treating, and maintaining a healthy psyche. Psychological therapy comes in many shapes and sizes. Different methods of therapy include but are not limited to cognitive behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy, psychoanalytic therapy, group therapy, and humanistic therapy. Most of these major therapeutic options fall under the umbrella of “talk therapy”. Although talk therapy is effective, practicing talk therapy exclusively limits not only the capabilities of therapy, but also potential clientele who would benefit from alternatives to talk therapy. Because each psyche is as unique and individual as fingerprints, each person seeking therapy should be able to create a personalized therapy program. Generating unique combinations of various therapy methods that are catered specifically to the client is a way to achieve this lofty goal. This research intends to better understand whether this proposal of combining various therapeutic techniques and methods in order to achieve individualized therapy programs will increase the effectiveness of the therapy being administered. In this meta analysis, the focus will be on animal therapy and poetry therapy used in conjunction theoretically as an example of potential applications for various combinations in conjunctive therapy. Conjunctive therapy is the main idea being piloted in this thesis and is a new form of therapy that involved the usage of two therapeutic techniques together while maintaining and equal prevalence and importance between them.