Once I logged onto the website of Art with Impact, I was fascinated to see all the information about mental health and they promoted the fact that mental health is something that needs to be talked about. From the mental health short film collection, I watched many different films that spoke about many different issues. The first film that I watched was called the SOCH- Supporting our community’s health- this was a film about the mother and daughter, and the mother having a panic attack/ anxiety attack. The moral of this film was that ‘It is important to take care of our mental health like we take care of our children’. This was something that really struck to me because the film was about an Indian mother and daughter, and being from an Indian background, I know that people have trouble talking about their mental health in the Indian culture. People are not able to open up about it as from a young age, they are told that depression is something that you can have, having anxiety is a big no-no, there is a big stigma talking about mental health.
The next few films that I watched were called ‘If I told you’, ‘Me too’ and, ‘Believe Me’. These are films that all had the same underlying message, which was about rape, each girl was raped and had a different experience about it. Each one took their own time to open up about it. The girl in the second film, kept it inside of her and then a year later chose to talk about, the girl in the second film tried talking to her friends about it but she was the one who was blamed because everyone thought that she lead her rapist on… The girl in the third film, told her father the next morning, she was still trying to understand whether it was considered rape and still had the underlying fear that no one would believe her or nothing would be done about.
From this I was able to learn that no matter what is going on, it is important to talk to people about it right away rather than holding it in. As the people around you are considered your well-wishers and would always want to help you no matter what.