Youtube Channel Review: Time to Change

Type: YouTube Channel: Time to Change
Highly Recommended Resource.

Time to Change is a campaign which sets out to end mental health stigma.   That’s a tough, but laudable goal (especially tough given the continuing level of irresponsible reporting by media such as the Sun newspaper) .

The campaign started in 2007 and is supported by the mental health charities Mind and Rethink.  In terms of online resources, Time to Change has both a webpage and a YouTube channel.   More broadly, Time to Change seeks to engage the general public through all forms of media, whether it be TV, radio, internet, magazines or poster campaigns.  I’m going to briefly discuss the YouTube channel today.

In short, it’s a brilliant resource.  Useful to everyone from mental health service users, through to teachers, families and indeed anyone who wants to know wants to understand more about mental health difficulties, be it their own or other peoples’.

The videos cover a large range of formats/styles and topics.   To take just a few examples:

• Animations such as the one above, beautifully illustrating a young person’s experience of depression and recovery.
• A mock horror film trailor, ‘Schizo’, which seeks to undermine traditional associations between mental health and violence).
• Short, poignant and powerful mini-dramas, such as ‘The Stand Up Kid’, which explores the unseen impact of stigma in schools.
• A silent film, ‘The 5th Date… time to talk’, complete with speech bubbles, which considers the sometimes scary experience of disclosing one’s mental health diagnosis to a date.
• Endorsements and discussions from famous people who have been open about their difficulties such as Stephen Fry and Frank Bruno (who discusses mental health with his daughter, Rachel Bruno) .

Many of the videos are sorted into particular topics, for instance there is a section with five videos, all of which feature a different person’s experience of mental health and the workplace.  In total there are over 80 videos, and so far, every one that I’ve watched is excellent.   I’m going to try and work my way through the other videos,  there’s a lot of them, but they are generally very short, and all inspirational, so not a chore.