NAILING THE STIGMA
‘ NAIL The Stigma’ campaign was launched at IT Sligo today ( Tuesday 28 Feb) with its aim to encourage students and staff to talk openly about Mental Health.
David Bergin, Matthew Mannion, Andrea Glynn and Denise Mc Dermott are all final year students in Public Health and Health promotion at Sligo IT and are the brains behind the initiative which first began as a college project.
“What we are promoting is a positive Mental Health Campaign where we are asking people to paint their baby finger nail red and then take a video talking about how they are feeling at that time. Be it happy or sad,” explains Denise Mc Dermott.
“The colour red signifies that we are nailing or stopping the stigma and the baby finger is to represent that you can’t always see Mental Health problems,” she said. They established the need for the campaign after completing a survey before Christmas where student’s attitudes towards Mental Health were examined.
They found that: 40 percent of students don’t express their feelings, 56 percent said they felt like Mental Health should be addressed in IT Sligo and that there was a stigma and just under 50 percent of students said they never or rarely would ever talk about their feelings.
“Our overall aim is to promote the positive side of Mental Health. So the idea is to get people talking, not bottle it up and let it turn into something negative,” said Andrea Glynn.
While there are many campaigns surrounding Mental Health what makes this one stand out is the approach to the positive side of Mental Health explained final year student David Bergin. He also believes that there are sufficient services in the college to help those that may be experiencing Mental Health issues but the stigma surrounding it holds people back.
“From the survey a majority said that there were adequate services in the college, but it goes along with the stigma that people don’t want to present to a counsellor that there is something wrong with them.
“The services are there to be used; if you have a toothache you go to a dentist it should be the same if you have a Mental Health Problem you go see someone. The services are there people just aren’t using them to the extent they should be.” added David.
“When people hear Mental Health they automatically think of Mental Ill Health, whereas mental health can be positive too. It doesn’t have to be negative. While we are staying away from the negative or Mental Ill Health that doesn’t say that we’re not promoting talking about it, we’re just staying on the positive,” he said.
If you want to record a video and become involved check out the Facebook page: NailtheStigma or @ nailthestimga on Twitter.
If you or someone you know may need help: The Samaritans: Free phone: 116 123 Text: 087 260 9090 Aware: TEL: 1800 80 48 48