TIME

Her Mother’s Mind

Photographer Melissa Spitz gives new dimension to mental illness in images of her own parent
Deborah Adams, the photographer’s mother, at Creve Coeur Lake in Missouri, November 2016

On one side of the lens is Melissa Spitz, a gifted photographer from St. Louis who now lives in Brooklyn. On the other is her mother Deborah Adams, whose struggles with mental illness Melissa has recorded over the past eight years for a series she publishes on Instagram called “You Have Nothing to Worry About.” The nearly 6,000 photographs form an intimate visual diary of a disease that is often invisible, cloaked in shame, fear and stigma.

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