Comfort & Disturb is the theme of this year’s Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF), which has events across Scotland from Monday 20 October to Sunday 9 November in one of its most ambitious and far-reaching programmes yet.

Why Comfort & Disturb? Part of the inspiration was the famous Cesar A Cruz quote that ‘art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable’. Cruz, a Mexican educator and activist, was making the point that art should challenge privilege, power and complacency at the same time as bringing solace to those who most need it. It’s a fitting theme for a festival that has always confronted stigma and prejudice about mental health while providing a platform for people who have faced sometimes profound mental health challenges to tell their own stories in their own way.

This year, those people include Glasgow-based Arab artist Huss, whose SMHAF commissioned short film, Until We Return, tells his story of being outed and forced into exile from Egypt; Australian performer Leah Shelton, whose grandmother was institutionalised in the 1960s, a story she vividly tells in her Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award-winning show Batshit!, now touring to the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen (Friday 17 October) and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (Wednesday 22–Saturday 25 October).

Irish visual artist Myrid Carten, who turns the camera on the complex and often painful dynamics of her relationship with her alcoholic mother in her debut feature film, A Want In Her (Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Monday 20 October; Glasgow Film Theatre, Wednesday 22 October), and Norwegian film director Ane-Martha Tamnes Hansgård, whose battle to separate her identity from her psychiatric symptoms is told in the film DIAGNONSENSE which has its UK premiere as part of SMHAF (University of Aberdeen, Wednesday 22 October; CCA, Glasgow, Friday 7 November).

With hundreds of events, it can be almost impossible to choose what to see at SMHAF, but obvious highlights include Out Of Sight Out Of Mind, an annual exhibition at Summerhall in Edinburgh that showcases – and is planned by – people with experience of mental health issues. This year’s show (Wednesday 22 October–Sunday 9 November) is the biggest yet, with 400 artists represented. It is not to be missed, especially when recent cuts to community mental health services in Edinburgh have made its future uncertain.

In Glasgow, head to Civic House on Thursday 23 October for Are You Sitting Comfortably, a one-day showcase of powerful new theatre works in progress by Emma Lynne Harley, Ese Ighorae, Milly Sweeney and Skye Loneragan, touching on issues from institutional racism to coercive control, followed by an evening of candid mental health-themed conversation and music with songwriters Emma Pollock, Jo Mango and Amy Duncan, in partnership with broadcaster Nicola Meighan’s A Kick Up The Arts podcast.

All of the above barely scratches the surface of an expansive programme that also includes the return of SMHAF’s International Film Awards (CCA, Glasgow, Thursday 6–Saturday 8 November), SMHAF x WayWORD at the University of Aberdeen (Wednesday 29 October), with a live literary showcase hosted by Jo Gilbert featuring Iona Fyfe, Mae Diansangu and Nuna, and hundreds more events all across Scotland, taking place in community spaces as well as arts venues.

The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival runs from Monday 20 October to Sunday 9 November across Scotland.