Imagine if you were sat at your desk one day and a colleague of yours crawled into work with an untreated broken leg. What would you do? Ignore it, or forcibly drag them to immediate medical assistance?
Probably the latter. You’d then also remind them this was not something to be ignored, sit them down, and brew them a cup of tea.
How different would this scenario be with a mental health problem? Time has shown that the answer to that is very different. And with mental health problems affecting 1 in 5 adults or 40 million Americans, it’s likely it is happening right in front of you. In your office.
The same goes for children. The fact is that mental health disorders are the most common diseases of childhood according to the Child Mind Institute, whose research has found that an estimated 17.1 million have or have had a psychiatric disorder. The scale of the problem is more than the number of children with cancer, diabetes, and AIDS combined.
This Mental Health Month Advertising Week is partnering with the Child Mind Institute to support their tireless work in delivering care and mental health education. Each day this month, Child Mind Institute unveiled a video by a celebrity to speaking to their younger self about growing up with a mental health or learning disorder. The aim is to break down associated stigmas and show that mental health is a problem we face as a collective. It is down to us to recognise ‘neurodiversity’ and all of the wonderful benefits that come along with it.
We reached out to our partners around the globe and for the last day of Mental Health Month, are thrilled to share the honest accounts from our friends at W+K, iHeartMedia, DCM, BraveBison and The Lighthouse Company.
We look forward to bringing these conversations to the stage this October, to continuing to fight the stigma, and to embracing the differences that make up our creative industry.
‘Great Minds Think Unalike’ has never felt more appropriate.
