A Mental Health Awareness Campaign

 By Martina Leone Dodero, Agueda Haidbauer, Carolina Fiedler, Magdalena Nudel and María Menoyo Michalowski

Mental health is as important as physical health. There is no shame in talking about mental  health issues, however many conditions are still deeply stigmatized

Accordingo to the WHO,  1 in 4 people will be affected by some kind of mental disorder at some moment of their lifes. The estimate is difficult, but between 500 and 800 million people are affected by a mental disorder.

Our aim was to think about a mental health awareness campaign. We worked on three priority quesitons: 

• Why is mental health as important as physical health?
• Which are the signs and symptoms of someone struggling with mental health that we have to pay attention to?
• How can we help people around us that are struggling with mental issues? 

Not being too invasive but still supporting someone that isn’t at his best is something to think about. Acting too fast can make the person uncomfortable or even guilty.  Trying to motivate them and showing your love often helps a lot. 

Digging deeper into our question "how to help" and "how to recognize if someone is struggling" we came along many videos and articles that helped us to find the key message of our campaign.

We are all living an unique moment in our lifes, a pandemic that keeps us distanced from our beloved ones. Many teenagers are increasingly suffering stress, sleeping and appetite alterations, increased feelings of sadness, anxiety or anger. Those who were already having some kind of mental vulnerability are dealing with even more extreme situations. So we came to the idea that our campaign could be  focused on mental health during social isolation.