From the very beginning the ‘see me’ campaign was designed to ensure that people experiencing mental health stigma and discrimination are part of our campaign development, implementation and evaluation. So people’s personal experience is at the heart of everything that we do.
The campaign is shaped by focus groups made up of people who’ve experienced mental ill health, and also our own research. This includes our ‘Hear Me’ survey which assesses the impact of stigma and how ‘see me’ has helped to make improvements.
The public isn’t always aware of how just much prejudice people with mental health problems can face. So we use personal testimony to highlight the many ways in which stigma and discrimination is experienced. This testimony plays an essential part in showing the extent of the problem throughout Scotland, and the impact that stigma and discrimination has for all of us.
Testimony is used in a variety of ways - we publicise it here on our website, use quotes in our leaflets and anonymous examples in all our presentations and awareness-raising sessions.
We also work with the media to encourage journalists to avoid stereotyping people with mental health problems. We do this by giving them the opportunity to interview one of our media volunteers. These are people (currently about 40 individuals) across Scotland who support us by giving interviews to journalists about their experiences of stigma and discrimination.
Ruth (left) a ‘see me’ media volunteer says, ‘If I had one message for any new volunteers it would be to say the encouragement they will get, if they wish, in speaking to or being filmed for media by ‘see me’ is really brilliant’