In Denmark, there are 300,000 Danish children—or an average of four children in every school class—whose parents struggle with mental illness. Mental illness is still taboo, it's not something we learn about from childhood. We know that  carrots, vitamins and milk keep the body strong, but we have a harder time figuring out what to do when we lose control of our emotions. Mental illness must be something we can relate to , not ignore. 

Anne Thorup, the senior physician at the Child and  Adolescent Psychiatric Center, tells me that a large part of the problem lies in the media. 

Mental illness remains marginalized. There are not enough campaigns and media programs to educate children and young people about mental health and illness.

In response, I made this project about my father, his mental illness and my relationship with him. My father is bipolar and was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer.

I visited my father at the Glostrup Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic in Glostrup. He does not look like himself, his eyelids are heavy and he drags his feet on the floor when he walks. 

Excerpt from my diary: 

 "Did you just wake up, you look really tired," I ask.

 "No, I just went for a walk.”

“Ok, where to?” I ask. 

 "Just around here," replies my father. 

It's 6 p.m. He must have been walking all day. "Yes... the highlights of the  day here are actually breakfast and lunch and dinner... otherwise not  much else happens." 

We talk a bit about technology, which we are both interested in, but my father doesn't have the same enthusiasm he used to.  

"I had my heart rate checked yesterday and my heart is beating too slowly..." says my father. "Ok... I'm sorry to hear that."... "Is that something you feel?" I ask, "No, not really," he replies. 

"Well, I'm going to dinner soon," he says. 

My father's heart beats too slowly. The doctors said it might be because of the medication he takes for his bipolar disorder… 

My father was allowed to leave the hospital unaccompanied, so we went to our old apartment, which was otherwise empty. Before my father was hospitalized, he had bad pain in the palms of his hands and on the soles of his feet, caused by cancer. The doctors said there was nothing that could help it, but he had tried reflexology for another problem and thought it might help now. So even though I got hot water when my father offered me coffee, because coffee was too expensive, he rented a massage chair with reflexology worth nearly 7000 €.

Here my father is wearing his suit jacket, which he got from his father, my grandfather. He has worn the jacket to many parties and a lot of dances. On the wall my father hung a plastic chair and placed a barbie doll on top. I don't know why. 

In his hands, he holds a painting he found in a rubbish bin, on the painting he has taped a receipt. The receipt on the painting dates from an evening when he had bad pain in his arms and feet. He was lying on the floor crying out in pain. He said I should cycle down for pills. A few days later I had planned to move into my own apartment, which I had been allowed to rent. The plan was for my father to drive the moving van. But then this happened. "I can't drive that car, I can't press the accelerator with this pain," he said while lying on the floor... That same evening, after he recovered but was still in pain, he said he had to go to a dance in Frederiksberg, a town in Denmark. He ordered a taxi for the trip.

Every wall in my father's apartment is drawn, written, or painted on. This one is a kind of status about my father's life. It presents the different options my father has. It has the logo of the  KnækCancer, a Danish organization specializing in cancer research.  From the logo, an arrow seems to point toward his death on the cross, the date he has determined based on the doctors' assessment of his  estimated lifespan. Then it says -Li, which stands for -Lithium, meaning that he refrains from taking lithium. Lithium is the medicine you take for bipolar disorder, and if he doesn't take lithium, he becomes bipolar, and that leads (according to him) to him being forced into the hospital and being forced to take lithium anyway. And in case he is hospitalized, he sets up four  disadvantages and a potential quality of life maintenance. The four disadvantages are a lack of trust in his ex-wife (my mother), lack of job opportunities, poor finances, and lack of an enriching life (The triangle on the left is Maslow's pyramid of needs). The one advantage there is, on the other hand, is me, his son. Next to "son", he writes "(self-choice),” which means if I still want to spend time with him.

The fourth time I visited my father in the hospital where he lived, I was allowed to see his room. The other three times I had visited, he had said that I was not allowed to see his room, but it dawned on him that he did not know why he said that. I entered a small room with a single bed, a  small toilet with a bath and a chest of drawers. On the wall hung a  whiteboard with a matching marker, on the blackboard was  written "be positive" in my father's handwriting.

The first time I visited my father in the hospital I hadn't seen him for a long time and I was nervous. The last time we said goodbye, things were tense. I  did not speak to him for a few months after he was admitted. I wrote him  a message: 

“Can I come and visit you on Sunday or Monday?” 

"Yes, that would be nice."

The building was large but uniform and difficult to navigate due to the many long corridors. Close to the hospital was a large water tower. The  buildings were yellow and the flowers were overgrown.

Here is the door to my old room in my father's apartment. When I lived there, there was a sign on the door: "Tim Bertrams Kammer."  Since I moved out something has  been added: "You made me complete, you made me come to myself."

This device will monitor my father's heart and whether it is pumping properly. Doctors discovered problems with his heart after he took medication for his mental illness.

This is a portrait I took of my father, it was taken about two years before this project, and he looks much better than he does now. The second picture is an old picture of my father riding his motorcycle. He had a welder make a  support wheel so he could ride and subsequently photoshop the support wheel out of the picture.

From a trip to the candy shop

My father has had a problem with his eyes in recent years, they close by themselves and cannot open again. No one knows why, he is trying to find connections between the times his eyes close. There is no diagnosis yet.

Here is my father's apartment complex, it is part of Glostrup Andelsforening (GAB), or “gabet” (The yawn) as my father calls it.

From a trip to town after shopping. My father is wearing my old trousers,  shoes he got from the municipality and clothes he got from the hospital.

We are lifting my father's sofa down the stairs because my father has been kicked out of his flat, he had too many complaints about loud music. He has difficulty lifting the sofa since he has become weaker since he started chemo treatment. After the move, my father gets huge bills for new paint for the walls, and movers for the sofa and other furniture he put in the wrong place.

This photo story is a part of a four-month mentorship program developed by Kulbroan and Chai Khana with support from the New Democracy Fund.