Traveling Bake Sale Encourages Open Dialogue About Mental Health
Depressed Cake Shop uses baked goods to promote conversations about mental illness and support local and national mental health organizations.
Cupcakes, cookies, and cakes are unlikely to be the first images that come to mind when one thinks about depression.
Since its inception in 2013, Depressed Cake Shop has traveled to Los Angeles, India, and more to raise money for local and national mental health charities.
Eve Bender
Yet, since its inception in 2013, the Depressed Cake Shop has been using these items and more to foster conversations about mental illness around the world.
Creative director and public relations specialist Emma Thompson established the first Depressed Cake Shop in the United Kingdom to raise awareness that 1 in 4 people will experience mental illness at some point in life.
Her idea was to bake gray-colored cakes and confections with a burst of color as a sign of hope to those facing mental illness and donate the proceeds from the sales to mental health charities.
The mental health advocates and bakers who collaborated to form the first Depressed Cake Shop in the United Kingdom formed a Facebook group, and from there, the concept spread to other parts of the world, with pop-up shops appearing in Scotland, Australia, and India; in this country, there are shops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Seattle, and Houston, among other places.
Valerie Van Galder, a mental health advocate and hobbyist baker who is in charge of public relations for the Depressed Cake Shop in Los Angeles, told Psychiatric News that many of the people who become involved with the project as bakers have firsthand experience with mental illness or know someone who does. For Van Galder, it was a father with bipolar disorder.
Van Galder was a film studio executive in Hollywood when she learned that her father had bipolar disorder but had kept it a secret from his family. When Van Galder’s mother died, he had a psychotic break, and she took time off from work to take care of him. “It became my mission to help others who were in my position,” she noted, and that included breaking the stigma associated with mental illness.
Van Galder often works with couture cake artist, baker, and mental health advocate Kara Andretta, who also has bipolar disorder.
“My biggest objective is to get people talking and eradicate the stigma surrounding mental illness,” Andretta told Psychiatric News. “The more awareness we spread [about mental illness] and the more stigma we can eradicate, the more we have a chance of reaching people who were previously unreachable.”
Andretta said that it was the stigma associated with mental illness that once deterred her from seeking treatment. “I didn’t want to admit that anything was wrong or talk to a doctor because I was scared of what would happen—I was scared to be branded or labeled.”
Andretta was diagnosed after an episode of severe depression landed her in the hospital 15 years ago.
Last year, she shared the story of her experiences with bipolar disorder at a Depressed Cake Shop event in Los Angeles. Afterward, she said, “many people disclosed their experiences with mental illness to me for the first time in their lives.”
The Los Angeles event was just one of many that Van Galder and Andretta have helped to promote to raise money through the Depressed Cake Shop. So far, the Depressed Cake Shop has raised more than $70,000 for a variety of mental health–related charities, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness and local mental health associations such as the Mental Health Association of Orange County in California.
Said Andretta, “People don’t have a problem talking about cancer anymore, or AIDS—but things like suicide, mental illness, and even depression are still taboo. We aim to change that.” ■
More information about the Depressed Cake Shop can be accessed here.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
History
Published in print: December 19, 2015 – January 1, 2016
Published online: 4 January 2016
Keywords
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Export Citations
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu.
There are no citations for this item
View Options
View options
Get Access
Login options
Already a subscriber? Access your subscription through your login credentials or your institution for full access to this article.
Personal login Institutional Login Open Athens loginNot a subscriber?
PsychiatryOnline subscription options offer access to the DSM-5-TR® library, books, journals, CME, and patient resources. This all-in-one virtual library provides psychiatrists and mental health professionals with key resources for diagnosis, treatment, research, and professional development.
Need more help? PsychiatryOnline Customer Service may be reached by emailing [email protected] or by calling 800-368-5777 (in the U.S.) or 703-907-7322 (outside the U.S.).