In the past few weeks I’ve come across several advertising campaigns aimed at raising awareness about mental health problems. Two in particular focusing on Autism and Eating Disorders caught my attention (you can see why below).

Advertisers know what “sticks” when it comes to marketing: sex, shock and emotion. These approaches can be effective ways to sell products or promote a brand identity - but how well do they transfer into the world social awareness? Or for that matter mental health?

SEXY

The people at Sociological Images alerted me to this Rethinking Autism ad campaign. The RA site maintains that:

“All too often in the world of autism, celebrity and sex appeal are used to promote pseudo-science that exploits autistic people, their family members and the public.  We decided to put those very same factors to work in service of the truth.”

This is a clever ad. It’s information is scientifically-based and it captures your attention.

But is it effective?

While I get the tongue-in-cheek reference that Autism has become a “sexy” topic of discussion, I question whether the core message gets buried beneath a sea of lingerie.

The Rethinking Autism website claims to want to “change the conversation one video at a time”, but are we changing the conversation towards Autism and debunking pseudo-science or does the ad instead meander towards a debate about the objectification of women as sex objects. If the latter then the message is lost.

EDGY

Next up is a series of ads from the Looking Glass Foundation for Eating Disorders based in Vancouver BC.

The ads are edgy alright - but their message is misleading. The tagline in the ads is “Not every note is a suicide note” - which falsely implies that eating disorders are a method of suicide. We know this is not true.

So while the ads are effective in shocking us, they do little to advance discourse because of their false message - in fact they may even perpetuate the myth that eating disorders are motivated by suicidal intent.

EMOTIONAL

Finally an anti-stigma ad campaign from the Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia (see video on their homepage).

The ad uses personal narratives, emotional music and dream-like backgrounds to tell a story. In under a minute the video captures the pervasive stigma that accompanies mental illnesses, touches on the scientific basis of mental disorders as brain disorders, points to the need to improved resources to meet the needs of those living with mental illnesses and challenges the viewer to talk more openly about mental illness and mental health.

Effective doesn’t have to be flashy and this ad is a great example of the power of emotion and story to communicate an important message.

~ David Venn

Happy Canada Day!!

Canada has a proud history of valuing health care as part of the fabric of this country and a basic right for all citizens. However, despite our commitment to overall health care, our attention to mental health care is overdue.

In Canada, approximately 1 in 5 children and adolescents experience some form of mental disorder. Most major mental disorders begin prior to the age of 25, making this period a critical time for the promotion and treatment of mental health problems.

One of the key initiatives of the Mental Health Commission of Canada is to develop a Mental Health Strategy for Canada. As part of the strategy the Child and Youth Advisory Committee of the Mental Health Commission of Canada will support the development of a framework specific to the needs of child and youth mental health.

We need your help!!

We invite all Canadians to share their thoughts and opinions in an online survey about values and principles relating to child and youth mental health.

TAKE THE SURVEY NOW

The survey will take about 30 minutes to complete (but you can save your answers and come back to it at any time).

It is important that we get the thoughts and opinions from as many different people as possible. Please pass this information along to your network, family, friends, or anyone who you think should join this consultation.

How do you let people know about your cause?

For big corporations and organizations this problem isn’t so difficult. They throw money at national advertising campaigns, they hire creative PR firms, they design complex websites, etc. But as non-profits our capacity to engage in these expensive promotional techniques is often limited.

Here are some useful, more cost-effective ways to share your message

Collaborate instead of communicate - when we work in a silo we don’t accomplish as much as we could if we worked in partnership. Find other organizations either at home or around the world who have the same cause and vision as you and ask them to partner. Don’t help yourself first. Bring something to the table that is of value to them, especially if you are the smaller organization. What do you have that they don’t? Find a way to make the partnership mutually beneficial. (See our project with ViewFinders as an example)

Listen to what others are doing - yours is not the only voice in the room. Instead of trying to communicate your message, listen to how others are communicating theirs. Set up RSS feeds to track what other people are doing, read blogs (Beth Kanter’s blog on how non-profits can use social media is excellent), follow people on Twitter and Facebook. Listening to others will give you great ideas about how to spread your cause.

Know your audience - a group of a few who care is often better than an army of many who don’t. Communication is not always a numbers game. Find a core group of people who really care about what you are doing and ask them to help you spread your message. (Chris Guillibeau talks about this idea in his Brief Guide to World Domination). A few people in power positions and really connected to what you are doing may have a much greater impact on your cause than many people with minimal influence.

Use multiple mediums - diversify the mediums you use to communicate your message. The best approach encompases multiple streams of communication. Email and e-newsletters may be great for reaching some people, but blogs and social media may be useful for reaching others. Cross-link your communications for a comprehensive approach. To Write Love On Her Arms is doing this really well.

A Child and Youth Mental Health Case Study

On July 1st we are opening up a survey as part of the Evergreen project to ask Canadians to share thier values and ideas about child and youth mental health. We have been implementing the principles above to spread the word about this initiative. Here’s how we are using these principles:

Collaboration - we don’t have many connections with parent groups so we found a publication that did and partnered with them. Today’s Parent has been supportive of our project from day one and have even helped us by asking their audience to take a survey about mental health and take part in this cool online flower garden for children’s mental health.

Listen - we have been using google RSS feeds and a del.icio.us account to track news and blogs about mental health. It’s been a great way to listen to what others are doing and to join the conversation.

Know your Audience - our key audiences, in addition to youth and parents, are health professionals and educators. By using promotional networks specific to these audiences (ie: HPClearinghouse) we can target our communications efforts.

Multiple Mediums - our blog and website are strong tools for reaching our audience. Recently we have expanded to Facebook and are using e-newsletters (sign up on left hand side) to engage people who are interested in what we are doing. Another great tool is interactive media like Slideshare.

Have you found a particular technique helpful or useful? What other ways are you are promoting your cause and voicing your message? Share your ideas in the comments section!

~ David Venn

(image credit: omacaco)

So after months of team discussion we have finally made our first foray into Facebook! Yeah I know … we are a little behind the trend - but better late than never.

Our goal is to get over 1,000 people to become a fan of our “Help Canada Create a Youth Mental Health Strategy” page.

The Facebook page is an offshoot of our Evergreen project - a collaborative initiative with the Mental Health Commission of Canada to produce a document to help improve policy and programming related to child and adolescent mental health across Canada.

We created the Facebook page for 4 primary reasons:

1. Engagement - we want people to share their opinions with us about what values and principles Canadians want to uphold in relation to mental illness and child and adolescent mental health services. On July 1st the public forum will be open for you to share your voice.
2. Education - an informed public is a strong public. Our Facebook page will feature some of the guides and information uploaded on our teenmentalheatlh.org site. We want to give people the best available info to make good decisions about their mental health.
3. Advocacy - the Mental Health Commission of Canada is committed to creating a comprehensive mental health strategy for Canada and are in support of a component specific to the needs of children and youth. Youth mental health will stay in the shadows unless we speak up and advocate for change - Facebook is just one of the ways you can speak up.
4. Connection - facebook is a great way to connect with people who share similar causes to you. By creating this page we want to connect people who care about youth mental health and want to make a difference to Canada’s mental health system.

Help make a difference for thousands of young people. Join “Help Canada Create a Youth Mental Health Strategy“.

New government figures out this week in the UK claim that public attitudes towards people with mental illness have reached a tipping point.

The Department of Health survey shows improvements including:

• 77% agree mental illness is an illness like any other an improvement of 3% on last year and up 6% since 1994
• 73% think that people with mental health problems have the same right to a job as everyone else, up 7% on last year
• 78% judge the best therapy for people with mental illness is to be part of a normal community, up 8% on last year
• 61% agree that people with mental illness are far less of a danger than most people suppose, an improvement of 4% on 2008

However, it also includes some more alarming figures:

• 11% would not want to live next door to someone with a mental health problem, an increase from 8% since 1994
• Almost a third of young people (16-34yrs) think there is something about people with mental illness that makes it easy to tell them from ‘normal people’
• 52% of young people agree people with mental illness are far less of a danger than most people suppose, 17% less than people over 55yrs
• 22% feel anyone with a history of mental health problems should be excluded from taking public office
• When the issue is brought closer to home - only 23% feel that women who were once patients in a mental hospital can be trusted as babysitters.
• 65% underestimated the actual prevalence of mental illness and only 13% were aware that 1 in 4 people will experience at mental health problem.

Stigma is essentially the polite word for discrimination. It has no place in our caring society. While some public attitudes toward people with mental illness are improving, the numbers above suggest we still have a long way to go.

It is all too easy to look at these numbers with rose-coloured glasses and proclaim that we have reached a tipping point. However I believe the Canadian Medical Association’s assessment of a similar study conducted last year to be more accurate when they called Canadian stigma and attitudes a “national embarrassment“.

Findings from that report (pdf) indicate:

• One in 10 thinks that people with mental illness could “just snap out of it if they wanted”
• One in four Canadians is afraid of being around someone who suffers from serious mental illness.
• Only half of those surveyed would tell friends or co-workers that a family member was suffering from mental illness.
• Only 16 per cent said they would marry someone who suffered from mental illness, and 42 per cent said they would no longer socialize with a friend diagnosed with a mental illness. By contrast, 72 per cent would openly discuss cancer and 68 per cent would talk about diabetes in the family.
• Half of Canadians think alcoholism and drug addiction are not mental illnesses.
• One in nine people think depression is not a mental illness, and one in two think it is not a serious condition.
• Almost half of Canadians (46%) think the term “mental illness” is used as an excuse for bad behaviour;
• A solid majority of Canadians would not have a family doctor (61%) or hire a lawyer (58%) who has a mental illness;

Stigma against the mentally ill is recognized as one of the greatest barriers to social justice, appropriate health care and development of civic society. We are not at a tipping point yet, but hopefully sometime soon.

~ David Venn & Dr. Stan Kutcher

(image credit: nite fate)