Somali Mental Health Awareness Campaign

This campaign aims to encourage the Somali community to recognise and speak up about how their attitudes, words and behaviours can influence others’ experiences and their everyday struggle with mental health problems.

Creative Concept

Articulating mental health challenges in the community, we will be visualising persons experiencing mental health issues to create awareness, understanding and empathy.

Deliverables

The campaign will kick off with 2D animated videos distributed using social media channels.

Break the silence

Mental health is a common problem for communities with displacement backgrounds that have witnessed wars or experienced sudden loss of loved ones through wars and endured complex journeys to find safety in the West. We as a Somali community urgently need to speak candidly about mental health and break the damaging culture of silence to address the stigma, labelling, misconceptions, and false misbelieves around mental health.

Enable help

The authorities often describe this community as hard to reach. Very little is known about their difficulties with complex mental health needs—this lack of understanding further disadvantages their access to mental healthcare services.

Create real change

We will positively be engaged in improving mental health knowledge, and we will also advocate culturally appropriate mental healthcare services for the Somali community. We will seek to educate service providers about the Somali community's lived experience to create appropriate prevention services that could support this community because of their complex migration experiences.