Digital Stories - One Year On
Posted Thursday 1 March 2012
Last St David’s Day, Mind Cymru launched our first set of digital stories showing the experiences of three people living with mental health problems in Wales.
We were overwhelmed by the positive response, with the original stories attracting interest from Finland and even Texas.
Building on this, one year on, we are delighted to launch four new stories online.
Like last year, participants attended a digital storytelling course, learning how to create a script documenting their experiences and how to put a film together and edit it.
Ellie, whose digital story was made in both Welsh and English, said:
In the year that I made this digital story, I was suffering a relapse of my mental health of the worst kind that I had ever experienced.
The encouragement and friendship I had from the people who I met and worked with on the digital stories project gave me an incentive to struggle through a very dark time.
Friends can sometimes be the very best medicine!
Anthony, whose contact with Mind Cymru came from completing Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST), part of the Positive Choices Project, said:
I wish I'd seen these digital stories over 30 years ago when I was struggling in isolation to make to make sense of my undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
We must break down the stigma, prejudice and misunderstanding that still pervades our society and I hope that my story helps.
Lindsay Foyster, Director of Mind Cymru, said:
People with mental health problems continue to face a huge amount of discrimination, not least through negative portrayals in the media.
Digital stories give people the chance to show their side of the story – what things are really like – and challenge damaging stereotypes.
Stories like those made by Anthony, David, Ellie and Rob are a powerful way of confronting unfair perceptions and breaking down barriers.