Hollyoaks stars fight stigma around mental health on Blue Monday

19 January 2018

As the UK enters 15th January, dubbed ‘Blue Monday’ the most depressing day of the year, Channel 4 and its Hollyoaks stars will be challenging the stigma around mental health.

Hollyoaks actors Ross Adams, Lauren McQueen and Richard Linnell and series producers will take part in a special event at Parliament exploring how the media can help tackle issues and taboos around mental health.

Mental health is now the most widespread disability in the UK and research suggests that one in six people will have experienced a mental health issue in the last week, so it’s highly likely that someone you work with will have been impacted.

Hollyoaks has recently raised awareness about mental health with a range of key storylines covering issues such as suicide and the soap has featured a special episode looking at self-harm in young people, developed in consultation with Mind, the Samaritans and the NSPCC.

Self-harm is one of the most common reasons that children and young people to contact Childline, and the NSPCC service delivered 18,471 counselling sessions about self-harm in 2015/16 – equivalent to 50 a day.

Despite this, self-harm remains stubbornly taboo, and whilst there has been great progress over recent years in terms of tackling stigma and generating discourse around mental health in general, the lack of understanding and awareness around self-harm endures. The self-harm storyline is part of Hollyoaks #DontFilterFeelings campaign and follows on from the recent Scott Drinkwell suicide attempted storyline  which won the Soap or Continuing Series category at the Virgin Money Giving Mind Media Awards 2017.

The three Hollyoaks stars will join a round table discussion with politicians, charities and key figures from the media industry to discuss how the media can break down stigma around mental health, particularly among young people.

Executive Producer of Hollyoaks, Bryan Kirkwood, said: “We are immensely proud that Hollyoaks will be taking part in a discussion in Parliament about a subject that is very important to us.

“Hollyoaks is in a unique position to talk to a young audience about the pressures in their lives and it’s a privilege to tackle real-life issues such as self-harm and male depression.

“We hope that viewers facing similar challenges can watch and think ‘that’s me’ and not feel alone. But we also aim to open up a conversation in people’s living rooms.”

And on Blue Monday, Channel 4 will be re-committing its efforts to raising awareness around mental health issues among its staff by re-signing the Time To Change Employer Pledge - an initiative aimed at encouraging employers to provide support for staff with mental health issues and changing the way people think and act about mental health in the workplace.

The pledge will be signed by Channel 4’s Director of Sales Jonathan Allan and Head of HR Stephanie Cox.

Jonathan said: “Mental health is just as important as physical health, but it’s sometimes more difficult for some people to talk about and as a manager its more difficult to see. It’s really important we create the context in which people feel totally comfortable to talk about their mental wellbeing so managerially and organisationally we can be in a position to offer understanding and appropriate support. “

Stephanie said: “Raising awareness of mental health has continued to be a priority for us over the last year – we’ve trained more than 60 mental health first aiders and created an internal network of mental health champions called ‘4Mind’. 

“I’m really pleased that we’re continuing those efforts this year, kicking off 2018 by re-signing the Time to Change Employer Pledge, and marking ‘Blue Monday’ with a variety of awareness-raising activities. Next month Channel 4 will be hosting a workshop for representatives of more than 20 other broadcasters and indies where we will share best practices around raising mental health awareness – continuing to drive positive change within our industry.”

Channel 4 will be running a series of internal events for its staff to raise awareness of the issues around mental health and draw attention to the support available for its employees.