2. About Your Facilitator
L’Oréal McCollum
L’Oréal McCollum, MSW, M.Ed.,
is a sexuality and mental health
educator, counselor, advocate,
consultant, and actress, based in
Philadelphia. She is thrilled to be
working with AWI to create space
for young people to learn and
connect through art and media -
two of her greatest loves.
IG: @lorealmccollum
3. Brought to you by…
• Campus workshops
• Monthly short film competition
• Short film production grants
• Global community
#Movies4MentalHealth
4. Here’s the Plan
• Quick Introduction
• Setting the scene together
• Mental Health
• Stigma
• Watch and discuss films
• Panel of students and resources
#Movies4MentalHealth
5. Where were you right before
coming to the workshop?
#Movies4MentalHealth
6. Heads Up
• Mental health is personal – YOU are the expert on
your own experience
• Public space – no confidentiality
• It’s okay to feel!
• Films and conversations might be triggering
• Please take care of yourself however you need,
including asking for help
• If you don’t want your photo taken, please let us know
#Movies4MentalHealth
9. MH Across Languages and
Cultures
If English is not your first language, does your
language have words for mental health, mental
illness and mental wellness?
Do these concepts exist in your home culture?
10. Some movies and tv shows that
show mental illness…
• the leftovers
• hannibal
• spinning out
• atypical
• bojack horseman
• prozac nation
• legion
• shameless
• criminal minds
• this is us
• 13 reasons why
#Movies4MentalHealth
11. Characters with mental illness
are portrayed as…
• unreliable
• excluded
• criminal
• different intrinsically
• eccentric
• hopeless
• fixed in their problems
• courageous
• unstable
• empathetic
• addicts
#Movies4MentalHealth
13. Stigma
•A judgment or stereotype that is:
• Always negative
• Always untrue
• Can be internalized
#Movies4MentalHealth
14. How does stigma feel?
causes shame
prevents ppl from reaching out
feel trapped
invalidating
hard to talk about
isolating
hard to escape
hard to reach out to those experiencing it
#Movies4MentalHealth
15. Three
By Karen Hua
AWI Winner, June 2015
Content heads up: obsessive compulsive disorder,
social anxiety, bulimia
#Movies4MentalHealth
16. Discuss in groups of three…
• What did you think?
• What did you feel?
#Movies4MentalHealth
17. What did you think? What did you feel?
Thoughts
person w/ eating disorder is not
skinny white girl
ending unexpected-->didn’t
end in flames
no communication about
struggles
^^implicit that they share w/
each other
good cinematography,
expresses emotions
maybe a support group at the
end
accomplishments don’t
necessarily reflect ability
heavy circumstances of
characters, can they help each
other with eparate issues?
Feelings
hopeful and optimistic→
struggling didn’t stop them
from living
intense,
concern for characters
suffocating (trying to resist
conditions feels like an internal
fight)
18. How did the filmmaking
techniques help tell the story?
cinematography
no dialogue
sound (music and tap) or lack there of
#Movies4MentalHealth
19. After Her
By James Kim
AWI Winner, October 2014
Content heads up: depression, isolation
#Movies4MentalHealth
20. Discuss in groups of three…
• What did you think?
• What did you feel?
#Movies4MentalHealth
21. What did you think? What did you feel?
Thoughts
phillip progressively
understanding protagonist’s
situation, offering real support
incohesively trying to make
sense of troubles
setting is ambiguous
confusion about continuity btwn
paper and accounts from
voicemails, lots left unknown
why did relationship end? did
breakup cause mental health
struggles or did they come
before?
^^possibly before, b/c of
comment about relationship w/
mother. letting things get
worse, relationships fall away,
Feelings
overlapping messages evokes
feelings of loss, disorientation
22. Why don’t people get help?
stuck in the symptoms
don’t think you deserve it
choices feel limited/not accessible
hard to escape
-don’t want to admit you have a problem or that
it’s a big deal or that you need other people to
help you
-hard to make/start the uphill journey, looks
really daunting, have to really face it/the world
-feels easier to make bad choices,
-don’t want to be asked to do something they’re
not ready to do, won’t really be heard
#Movies4MentalHealth
23. A Short Film About Anxiety
By Lily Rose Thomas and Stephen Isaac-Wilson
AWI Winner, July 2018
Content heads up: anxiety
#Movies4MentalHealth
24. Responses and Reactions?
#Movies4MentalHealth
progressive-->touches on a lot, many aspects of anxiety (where it can
comes from, how it feels, etc.) in a short timw
‘it’s a battle with your mind’, sense of self and other ppl’s sense of who
you are, separate from you battles
25. What can we do?
-talk about it
-safe spaces
-wholistic view of mental health on campus (wellbeing)
-seeing and hearing eachother
-
#Movies4MentalHealth
