Dr. Guislain “Breaking the Chains of Stigma” Award for Janos Marton
Dr. Janos Martin
Founder of the Living Museum.
The 2015 winner of the Dr. Guislain “Breaking the Chains of Stigma” Award is Dr. Janos Marton, Ph.D., director of The Living Museum in Queens, New York. The award honours Dr. Marton for his extraordinary efforts and distinctive ability to nurture creativity of individuals living with mental illness and for establishing a groundbreaking and flourishing artistic community within a mental health care setting.
Over the last 30 years, Dr. Marton has fostered an environment of artistic expression at The Living Museum located within the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center. At The Living Museum, people with mental illness are encouraged to transform their experiences to artistic expression, a shift that can have profound implications for a patient’s overall well-being. Driven by a desire to empower his patients, Dr. Marton is the curator of the largest collection of art by people living with a mental illness in the United States.
Through The Living Museum, Dr. Marton has positively impacted the lives of many patients, volunteers, students, artists and mental health professionals. To date, this concept of creating an artistic atmosphere for mental health patients has sparked similar creative centers regionally and globally, from Long Island to Switzerland to Holland.
A call for nominations for the Dr. Guislain “Breaking the Chains of Stigma” Award was issued on 27 January, 2015. More than 54 nominations were received from across the globe, after which a jury of international mental health advocates and renowned authorities in the field selected Dr. Marton.
The Dr. Guislain Award program is a joint project of the Dr. Guislain Museum and Janssen Research & Development, LLC. Janssen provides financial and in-kind support for the program. Dr. Marton will receive a $50,000 prize that must be used toward further work to reduce societal stigma about mental health and disorders of the brain.
For more information, about the Dr. Guislain Award, please visit www.drguislainaward.org
About Dr. Guislain Museum
The Dr. Guislain Museum was founded in 1986 in Ghent, Belgium, and its exhibits address the history of psychiatry in a permanent collection and through a series of half-yearly changing thematic exhibitions. The Museum features an array of psychiatric photographs, two centuries of comprehensive archives and an extensive library chronicling the history of psychiatry. Comprehensively, the Museum seeks to educate the public and rectify the misunderstandings and prejudice associated with treatment for mental illness. The Museum Dr. Guislain attracts 70,000 visitors each year.
About Dr. Joseph Guislain
Dr. Joseph Guislain (1797-1860) was a driven activist for patients with mental illness and the first Belgian psychiatrist to provide scientifically-based treatment for these individuals. As a passionate advocate for those with mental illness, Dr. Guislain worked tirelessly to stand up for the rights of patients and help improve their social position. He lectured and published extensively about mental illness and enjoyed considerable recognition by his contemporaries.