“Darling little Bennie if he could only have lived to get home, this would not have seemed quite so hard, I can never become reconciled to the loss of my darling – never – if I were to live a hundred years. My life for the future is only a weary journey toward the grave, where I may rest beside my dear boy. I almost despair at times of ever getting beyond it.”

The first line of Hattie Dudley’s January 1884 diary, which had been donated to the Brick Store Museum in the 1980s, stopped my rapid search through the contents of its acid-free folder. Here, these words written in pencil and faded over the years, allowed me to see into the mind of a woman who had just lost her three-year-old son while on a trip to Hong Kong. Each one of us inherently understands – at least remotely – how she felt.

With 35,000 pieces of archival material in the museum collection, how would anyone beyond museum staff ever see this and respond to it? For two years this question bothered me. We could put it on exhibit? Maybe. But the words were too important, too impactful, for someone to see and walk away. We needed to talk about it.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health Disorders (part of NIH), an estimated 26% - about 1 in 4 adults – suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder every year. Nearly 10% suffer from depression, with women twice as likely to suffer from major depression than men. Almost 20% of Americans struggle with panic-related disorders each year. This means nearly 45 million people a year are diagnosed with mental health issues. The American Psychiatric Association reports that more than half of those struggling with mental health issues do not acknowledge their illness or receive help because of the stigma related to reporting mental disorders. That means nearly 100 million people suffer from mental illness each year – nearly a third of our nation.

NEMA and other regional associations have helped to inspire new (and needed) discussions on museums’ role(s) in addressing major societal issues. With a third of the country suffering from mental illness, and likely the remaining two-thirds knowing someone suffering, this topic somehow largely remains absent from museum exhibition and programming narratives (at least outside of biographies of specific artists or historical figures). Mental health and its two main public health concerns, addiction and suicide, are in need of museums’ leadership.

We know this. Museums often promote ourselves as sites that serve our communities in a mental health capacity. Whether it be addressing multiple learning styles; offering early or late hours for those with sensory needs; programs and tours designed for those with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers; offering hospital outreach and health literacy; pathways to centering oneself through art or experiences. The next logical step to our work is to use the human stories within our walls to help audiences find they are not alone in their experiences.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, people everywhere – NEMA included – started talking about those uncomfortable depressive feelings we all felt. Hattie’s diary came back to me. How could we use historic mental health crises and past emotional experiences to highlight what’s happening in our community today?

Perfectly timed, the Maine Humanities Council (MHC) called for proposals for spring 2021 Discussion Groups in which organizations – mostly libraries – could choose a book and host a reading group to discuss difficult topics important to the community. MHC offered a list of suggested books from which to choose, or applicants could pick their own. For each proposal selected, MHC funded a trained facilitator to help move discussions forward.

This was the museum’s chance to try something brand-new; create a pilot program linking mental health issues and archives, to see if audiences would respond.

The Program

The museum proposed to choose our own readings, but not in the form of a book. Museum staff compiled letters and diaries from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries that somehow highlighted mental health, emotional struggles, or other difficult experiences. While there is definitive material on historic peoples in Maine mental institutions and their treatments there (an interesting lecture topic itself), we focused on a different angle: mostly-invisible suffering in the “everyday.”

With that, “’I Can Sympathize with You in the Feeling’: Exploring Mental Health through Archives” was created. The quote in its title came from one of the included letters, from a husband to his wife in 1848.

Like today, anyone could suffer from mental health problems. Discussing only those whose mental suffering resulted in committal ignores the majority of mental health suffering, and it detaches the topic from being relatable for most people (in other words, it becomes a haunting history rather than a shared experience – though both have their uses). We felt it important to select pieces that discussed subtle hints and feelings. This can be a challenge as it is up to the reader to discern any hidden issues – read between the lines – and you want to be cautious not to place a different meaning on someone else’s words.

These sources first had to be transcribed by staff and volunteers and then the original pieces scanned into our Digital Archives. Tangentially related, this project boosted our digitization output as transcription volunteers saw an end-result to their work.

The selected archival writings were placed into three reading packets and divided over three sessions: “Family & Children” (Week One); “Maritime Stories” (Week Two); and “20th Century Stories” (Week 3). Offering primary resources, especially dealing with sad topics, from the Museum’s Archives instead of a published book brings unique challenges:

• Knowledgeable discussion facilitator: in addition to training as a facilitator, a background in local history was incredibly useful. Luckily, MHC assigned two facilitators for this project, the first was Kartika Wright, Maine Army Reserve Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (facilitator-in-training); and Professor Libby Bischof, Director of the Osher Map Library at USM. Professor Bischof has an outsized knowledge of Maine history and was able to add depth to our discussions as many attendees had questions related to the time periods in which the materials were written.
• Emotional triggering: early on in our planning, our team of staff and MHC facilitators recognized the risk of sharing particularly sad or disturbing personal experiences through these letters and diaries. Examples of triggering materials in our reading selections: Hattie Dudley’s diary discussed losing a child; Lillian Smart’s letter outlined emotional abuse and her eventual divorce in 1934; Lucy Palmer’s 1838 diary exposed her lack of interest in doing anything, especially the things she “used to do,” as probable depression. MHC facilitators suggested inviting a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) to join the discussion series in case anyone attending needed additional one-on-one support. Not only was it comforting to offer her services at the beginning of every discussion, but she contributed greatly to the conversations surrounding the letters and mental illness.
• Attendees always wanted to know more. One unexpected result of this discussion series was that attendees, after reading the diaries and letters for that week, wanted to know more about the writers of said archives. In producing the program, we were solely focused on the mental health aspects of the letters, so we weighted the personal histories of its writers far less. However, we learned that it is not enough to provide the diary without photos and context for the lives of the writers. If you are planning a project like this, be prepared to have a staff member join the discussion to talk about the histories.

The discussion series occurred between February and April 2021 entirely over Zoom, with 15 attendees overall (a full house!). As MHC suggested, keeping the group small allowed for expansive discussion while keeping the forum more personal and friendly. The meeting always opened with a reminder on privacy and how the meeting space was a safe place to share feelings and struggles. While it was not a place where others would suggest help, it was a forum where strangers would share your feelings. At the end of the series, the group felt more like a family than random strangers Zooming in from across New England.

Though the group was small compared to most public programs and our attendance generally, this program made more of an impact (considering the survey results and unsolicited emails from almost every participant) on its attendees than other programming we have offered. The museum is already planning next steps to deliver more mental health programs like this one in Fall 2021; and secured funding from our local Southern Maine Health Care to support such events. An additional benefit to the program was volunteer recruitment; those with personal buy-in to the program have now volunteered to comb through the Archives for new discussion topics in letters and diaries.

This programming was a major undertaking and could not have happened without the support of the Maine Humanities Council and their recognition of how archives can be used to explore mental health as worthy of funding and trained facilitators.

Museums and archives have a major role to play in helping audiences recognize they are not alone. If you hold the stories of people in your museum, you can do this.