Silver Lining is a B Corp creative agency dedicated to helping out charities, B Corps, and organisations who want to leave a positive impact on the world. In this guest post, the agency’s account director Ash Smithies (lead image) provides some excellent tips for anyone working on a mental health campaign…

Silver Lining has been fortunate enough to work with some incredible organisations within the mental health care sector.

I couldn’t help but notice that over the last 6 months, the conversations within this sector have shifted. From our client briefings, client workshops, and conversations with people who have lived experience, there seems to be a deep desire for the mental health sector to shift its focus from awareness campaigns and move more towards action-oriented campaigns. 

Mental health awareness has grown exponentially over the last few years. Part of this growth is attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic causing a 25% increase in depression and anxiety globally in 2020¹, making it much harder to ignore mental health. The other part of this growth comes from the multitude of mental health campaigns that focus on awareness.

Mental Health campaigns that focus on increasing awareness have played an important role in society. Not only have they started important conversations and broken down the stigma associated with mental health, but they have also left the community on higher alert to help those who are struggling. In a post-Covid world, we’ve even seen mainstream FMCG brands like Cadbury and Walkers in the UK, allude to the fact that mental health challenges are more visible in our everyday lives.

One of the core reasons awareness campaigns in the mental health sector are so powerful, is they lead with fear. In order to shake society into behaving differently, there is often a level of shock required within campaigns. A fantastic awareness campaign is The Last Photo campaign from CALM. The purpose of this campaign was to spread awareness that “suicide doesn’t always look suicidal”. The fear in this example, is that we could be living amongst loved ones, unaware of their suffering inside.  This campaign leaves you feeling alert to the problem. But it doesn’t offer a solution.

As awareness of mental health challenges has increased, the advertising industry should be shifting our focus to action-oriented campaigns that encourage help-seeking and speak directly to the journey of finding support. 

To put it simply:

• Awareness Campaigns = notify people of the problem
• Action-Oriented Campaigns  = encourage help-seeking

There are four key opportunities when we create messaging for action-oriented mental health campaigns: 

1. Reduce the stigma around reaching out for support

As we move into this next phase of action, our priority should be to reduce the stigma around reaching out for support.  Campaigns need to break the stereotype that reaching out for support is considered ‘weak’ or even ‘dramatic’. We need to normalise the fact that 17.5 per cent of Australians have seen a health professional for their mental health, we’re just unaware that they do.

2. Show a variety of actions

A common misconception is that there’s only one type of support to seek; speaking to a psychologist. In reality, the range of support services is more diverse now than it has ever been.  In our advertising campaigns, we should always show a variety of actions that people can take. The term ‘action’ references anything that could help their situation.

In a recent campaign for our client Suicide Prevention Australia for their online platform Doing It Tough, an online platform that connects men in NSW with over 150 support services, we interviewed four men who have lived experience with mental health challenges. 

Within these conversations, we observed that the path to finding support looked incredibly different for each man. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. Instead, it’s completely dependent on what you resonate with as an individual and which environments are going to be most beneficial to you.

For example, a few support types are:

• private therapy sessions
• group therapy sessions
• rehabilitation centres
• specialist support groups (eg. for niche categories)
• clinical support
• medication
• online group or private sessions
• self-study online courses

Most of the men we interviewed for this campaign used a blend of multiple support types which served them throughout different phases of their journey. Every case is both unique and complex.

3. Encourage people to try (and try) again 

Another interesting insight that came from the Doing It Tough interviews was that it’s incredibly common for people not to ‘click’ with the first or second practitioner they visit. Previous studies show that 20 per cent – 57 per cent of people in therapy do not return after the initial session³. These same studies mention that the number one reason people don’t return is because clients are dissatisfied with the therapist.

We have an opportunity to highlight that the first or second session sometimes doesn’t resonate, and that’s okay. Other people have also experienced this same dissatisfaction but they have tried again with another practitioner or another support type.

Harry, from the Doing It Tough campaign made a great analogy with this, he compared it to dating. We don’t give up on dating if the first person we date isn’t ‘the one’, we keep trying until we find someone we resonate with. It’s exactly the same with seeking support.

4. Be open to educating ourselves and others 

The fourth opportunity we have is to encourage the community to educate themselves on how to have conversations about mental health.

As a community, the way we respond to people who open up about their mental health challenges can help them take that next step to see support, like speaking to their GP.

When humans are afraid of saying the wrong thing in a sensitive conversation, we tend to brush things off, say less or even worse, say nothing. It can come across as dismissive to the person who is struggling, however, most of the time we haven’t been taught those skills on how to have conversations around mental health.

There are incredible resources available that educate people on these skills. One of our clients, Mental Health First Aid offers training to the community, workplaces, school teachers and teenagers. These courses are the equivalent of a physical first aid course but for mental health. It teaches people how to respond confidently so they don’t shy away from having those important conversations.

Final thoughts

The mental health epidemic is very real and impacts all of us in direct or indirect ways. But do we really think society is in the same place mentally as we were three years ago? Our views on mental health have evolved which means our communication around mental health must evolve too. Without shifting our messaging, we risk becoming stagnant and stuck in the heaviness of the problem and miss the opportunity to give people hope and movement towards the solution.