My depression, your depression - same name, different stories
Now, more than ever before, we need stories. We need stories of courage and compassion, love and loss, triumph and tragedy, hope and resilience.
During this project, in order to explore depression & mental illness from a variety of angles, digital stories were created by:
- Researchers who study depression;
- Adults with lived experience of depression;
- Mothers of young people with mental illness;
- Young people (16-25) who explored the topic of mental health and wellbeing.
These stories (videos) can be viewed on the Patient Voices website.
Trigger warning: These stories talk about mental health and contain themes such as suicide.
[Digital stories are short videos (2-6 minutes) created by bringing together a series of pictures or photos with a voiceover. All of the digital stories created for this project were made entirely by the individual, during a facilitated process with Patient Voices]
What next for these digital stories?
Our goal is to have these stories seen by as many people as possible.
To this end, we aim to:
- Show them at public events to inspire others, and reduce stigma around depression
- Share them with policymakers and clinical staff to increase their awareness.
- Use them to bring a human perspective to scientific conferences and meetings.
If you are interested in collaborating with us on this, please contact iona.beange@ed.ac.uk
Background:
Depression is very common with one in ten people being diagnosed with the illness at some point in their lives. But rather than being just one condition - experts believe clinical depression is a collection of different disorders with one common symptom - low mood.
The STRADL research project at The University of Edinburgh (funded by The Wellcome Trust) aimed to find out more about these subtypes of depression and how we might help people build their resilience at all stages of their lives. This project has led to over 100 journal articles so far and over 100 genes have now been linked to depression.
And although the STRADL research project has now finished, this work still continues within the Division of Psychiatry at The University of Edinburgh.
Funding and partners
This project was funded by a ScotPEN Wellcome Engagement Award (217078/Z/19/Z) and is run by Dr Iona Beange, Knowledge Exchange and Impact Officer at The Division of Psychiatry, University of Edinburgh (iona.beange@ed.ac.uk) in collaboration with Patient voices and: