What an incredible and honest comment. A lot of your experience and response illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the Bell campaign. I think we can all agree that mental health was in the news in a big way this week and this is a good thing, which is why most of talking/writing about this feel conflicted.

It’s a great point that the design of the campaign could leave participants feeling like a statistic and part of an advertising campaign, which as a non-medical professional I am going to assume is not going to improve mental health. Hopefully as this campaign moves forward (it is a 5yr plan) it will be able to transition to something that keeps the benefits of awareness and donations, without the corporate branding of individual experience.

#LetsTalk

So: awareness, good. Donations, very good. Maybe the net benefit of this campaign outweighs the icky feeling I get of shilling for Bell. If a bit more money means that I or someone else would have waited less time for help, or been able to afford help, or gotten the right diagnosis, or not been told ‘its all in your head’, I do think it’s worth it. And yet….

Obviously this highlights my own personal issues, but one problem for me is that I often feel that I have no value to anyone; or, people will just use me and throw me away. There was something about this campaign that cut to the core of that. I felt like a statistic and a part of Bell’s advertising. I’m a person: i’m not something you can point to or use as a horrifying example. I don’t have a trendy disease: I’m in pain, and I’ve been in pain for a while. When issues that deal with struggles of identity, self-worth, value to others are conflated with profits and brand recognition, it gets a bit confusing. There’s often an analogy used that a mental health problem (I see this used with ‘depression’ most commonly) is just like an injury or a chronic illness: you wouldn’t expect to be able to do everything everyone else can do if you had a broken arm, so you can’t if you are depressed. But there is, for me, a difference: everyone can see a broken arm. A medical diagnosis for a condition with clear symptoms and repercussions is far less nebulous than just not being able to get out of bed for a while. It’s hard to want to be a spokesperson for mental health because it’s so deeply connected to a flaw in your very being: not something you have, or you got, but something that you are. If this ‘something that I am’, is just of a financial benefit to a major company (that I don’t even really like), I feel pretty cheap. I feel like a puppet. I feel that all I’m good for is to be a mentally ill person so others can feel better about themselves.

I also fear that there’s a generality with this that will contribute to people self-and misdiagnosing. As if, today, (or yesterday) we all acknowledge our own struggles, and we do our little bit, and that’s the end. It’s a huge pet peeve of mine when people self-diagnose and then claim the illness: ‘I’m OCD’ thrown out in casual conversation, etc. I think you should listen to yourself, trust yourself if there’s a problem, and you might be right, but saying that makes it harder for people who actually are diagnosed with the problem to get the right help and be taken seriously. I was guilty of this for a long time: then I got diagnosed with a problem and my life got much harder, because once you are slapped with an official mental problem diagnosis, no one wants you. It’s not a trendy ‘gluten allergy’: it’s something that ended lots of things in my life. It doesn’t make you more interesting: it makes things a lot harder. There was a generality to the campaign that made me think it would lead to a vey shallow discussion that lasted for 24 hours, that felt geared towards acknowledgement of general problems instead of specific ones, and then stopped. That brought us all a feeling of self-satisfaction and community (which is great, but…), but wouldn’t actually be of help to a lot of people struggling with mental health. We’ll see if there are plans to move forward.

I apologize if anyone’s offended. This is sticky territory and I’m only speaking for myself.

I think this is a first step. It’s actually a beautiful tie in that a communications company (like Bell) would champion mental health (the evil marketing genius who wants to fill a theatre and get patrons in me can recognize this). I’d love to see them move forward with this in a less commercial way, or see it spark something that moves beyond a corporate tie-in. Things aren’t simple and that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t act: but I think we need to talk. Without branding. Just talk. And then….well, there’s a lot more after talking. But that’s the beginning.

Thanks for this. It’s great to hear your experience working on twitter and through performance to raise awareness of mental health issues.

I think it is important to recognize that yesterday was a banner day for discussion of this kind and the impulse and certain elements of the execution of the campaign should be applauded.

I do think that moving forwards it would be really exciting if the de-branded #LetsTalk became a standard hashtag to raise awareness of mental health issues. Isn’t really up to me though. It’s better when this decision is arrived at through the regular community-based haggling and negotiation that results in a hashtag.

Yesterday I saw more people engaging and talking about mental illness through social media more than I ever have before, including Mental Health awareness week/month or when the Mental Health Strategy for Canada was launched. I will agree that the hashtag was misused and thrown onto the end of tweets for the sake of donating, but there were some good things happening.

It was also in line with the Life is Sweet series I’ve been running on my blog in conjunction with my upcoming cabaret honouring my mom, who dealt with depression and ultimately committed suicide. One of my objectives for the show was to raise awareness of mental health and get people talking. The content that people have been sharing has been brave and candid, and it has opened up a dialogue about mental health with those around me. And yesterday I added #BellLetsTalk in addition to #lifeissweet.

Would using simply #LetsTalk be as effective? Absolutely. Do I think that Bell gained any customers or popular opinion by the campaign yesterday? I don’t think so. I love the idea of using #LetsTalk to address mental health through social media and truly hope that some action / changed perspectives happen as a result of yesterday.

Thanks for this great comment. Yeah I included the Raptors tweet on purpose because it had nothing to do with mental health. It was just rain’n 3s at the ACC.

I think you are right that tweets like these are a result of how every tweet received a 5 cent donation. Columnist/political commentators Scott Reid and Scott Feschuck actually spent the day tweeting back and forth about anything BUT mental health, but using the hashtag – I guess the idea being that it was still laudable just to peg Bell for a nickel each time, even if no one was going to open up. (I don’t judge this too harshly though, as it strikes me as exactly the sort of hair-brained scheme I would come up with.)

What I am suggesting, is that Bell could have achieved the same results without including the brand in the design of the campaign. The website, celebrities, “promoted” hashtag, graphic design and everything else is possible without the branding.

This begs the question: Why was it included? The answer is of course: Because it is advantageous to Bell to be a branded sponsor of every personal story about mental health we publish to our personal networks. This however puts the activity in a new realm and the ethics are dodgy.