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.

In the United States, the majority of the population suffers from some form of trauma. There are many ways that an individual can cope and accept their trauma, but two practices stand out as an inexpensive, flexible option for many. Bibliotherapy is the use of reading literature as a way to learn more about and understand one’s trauma through the perspective of others. Expressive writing is the practice of writing and reflecting about one’s own traumatic experiences, as well as the emotions that are tethered to it. In this paper, I explore the fields of bibliotherapy and expressive writing as forms of therapy by reviewing the history, use, goals, and effects of each in the context of mental and emotional well-being. Intertwined with the scholarship is my own self-guided bibliotherapy of reading memoirs and poetry collections related to my trauma and self-guided expressive writing in which I wrote a short collection of personal essays and poetry, finding that both fields, separately and used together, are effective avenues for trauma healing.

Throughout every liberation movement in America’s history, poetry has been an undeniably powerful act of resistance. Even today, protest poetry is instrumental to countless resistance movements because it captures attention, evokes emotion, and demands social progress. My project is divided into two parts. The first part is made up of five journals. These journals are informal written responses that conversate with different texts and analyze specific images within specific passages. My exploration of protest poetry focuses on five prominent poets of the last century: Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Gloria Anzaldúa, Camille T. Dungy, and Claudia Rankine. The second part of this project is my contribution to protest poetry. For my collection, I crafted ten poems in which I resist a range of issues that have to do with class, gender, and ethnicity. My protest poetry is also an examination of what it means to be human, particularly in modern day America.

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.