Hi all,

The BBC have been in touch with an idea for a documentary as part of their upcoming young person’s mental health season. Their ideas are below.You can get be anonymous and don’t have to actually feature in the programme.

If you interested please get in touch with me chris.leaman@youngminds.org.uk

Hope everyone is doing ok?

Chris

Our aim is to shed a light on the daily experiences of young people with mental illnesses. Using footage generated by the young people themselves (we will train some to use cameras, some might have small cameras fixed to their bodies, and we will use some camera phone and computer footage) we will document the everyday experiences of young people with mental illnesses as well as the reactions of others around them. We will then record the voices of these people over their own footage (DVD commentary style) explaining how they were feeling and what they were thinking at the time. Their thoughts and feelings will be further illustrated by animation.

Whilst these thought processes will sometimes surprise an audience, what might be most surprising is how similar these thought processes are to those of every person watching. Everybody feels worried or insecure or even paranoid at some point in their lives – perhaps all that is different is that for people with mental illnesses these feelings are magnified and can spin out of control. By revealing the detail of people’s thought we hope to subvert expectations and challenge the stigma associated with mental illness.  

What I need for my proposals is real examples of people’s inner thoughts and feelings during day to day life. So what I would like to do is get a group of volunteers who would be willing to write a diary of their day (or even week – we can see how we go) describing exactly how they were feeling and what they were thinking throughout the day.