Five More of the Best: Videos About Mental Health

Talking about mental health doesn’t really get any easier with time.

However, it does become a little less daunting when you’re surrounded by people – online or in real life – who know what you’re going through. Since our last Five of the Best: Videos About Mental Health, more and more YouTubers have opened up about their experiences with mental health and illness. The conversation is growing and it’s becoming more and more common to see that you aren’t alone in your own experiences; wider society hasn’t necessarily made any advances in making the conversation easier for us, so we’ve had to do it ourselves.

People are turning their struggles into art – spoken word, songs, books, etc – meaning there are even more ways for us to connect with others and share what’s going on in our brains. So here it is, Five MORE of the Best: Videos About Mental Health.

Happy. | ChewingSand

We kick this list off with Hazel Hayes and her first venture into spoken word poetry. Happy is a beautiful piece that shares a message we can all apply to our lives, whether we suffer from mental illness or not. She talks about how happiness may not be a constant in our lives, but it’s not as absent as we may think, and most importantly, she reminds us that it will always come back.

The video was animated by Cayleigh Maloye and Chloe Dungate, and the super adorable art style fits the tone of the poem perfectly. It feels comforting to watch and is definitely a reminder that talking about mental health doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.

secret for the mad | doddleoddle

Dodie Clark frequently talks about her struggles with depression, anxiety, and depersonalisation on her channel, and secret for the mad is a song about exactly that.

It’s the perfect tune to help you through some of your darkest moments. She reminds us that, no matter how alone these issues may make us feel, there are people out there who have survived what we’re going through and there are others who love us and want us to be okay. Dodie manages to tackle both the idea of being loved and the phrase “it gets better” in this song without sounding patronising or like she doesn’t understand. You can tell she’s been there before and made it out, meaning you will too.

Dodie’s releasing her first memoir, Secrets For the Mad: Obsessions, Confessions and Life Lessons, this coming November, where she’ll be talking further about her issues with mental health.

Mental Health Coping Ft Lorcan | Jake Edwards

Jake Edwards and their friend Lorcan have a nice little chat about dealing with anxiety in this video, offering lots of great tips and reassurance. Together, they talk about the importance of doing little things to make yourself feel better, whether that’s putting on clean clothes or making a proper meal. It may sound stereotypical, but these simple little tricks can help improve your mood, even if just slightly!

Lorcan also mentions “stimming” – using stimulation toys, such as tangles, chew necklaces, and more recently fidget spinners – to help alleviate anxiety. They can be really helpful if you’re the sort of person who gets restless when you’re anxious. For example, stimming can help stop you from picking your skin or nails, as you can move your hands without being destructive to yourself.

This is #MyTruth – what’s yours? | Mind

This powerful short film from mental health charity Mind focuses on the stigma surrounding mental health issues in young black men living in the UK. Written by award-winning filmmaker Daniel Anderson, the film gives us a glimpse into the lives of Jonah, Michael, Raymond, and Jerome and shows us how they are affected by mental health issues.

Mind is one of the UK’s leading mental health charities and with this video they hope to shed more light on the issue of mental health within the black community. Their project is focused on prevention, ensuring that the members of this community can speak out about their problems without fear of culture boundaries and stigmas, so that they can get the help they need before it’s too late.

Books Dealing w/ Mental Health! | Lex Croucher

To close off this list, Lex Croucher offers some suggestions for further reading about mental health, with a little help from Penguin Platform. She talks about how reading about other people’s experiences with mental health issues can be helpful in understanding yourself or people you know who suffer from mental illness, and how it can also just be nice to relate to the characters in a book a little more.

In this video, Lex suggests a series of short comics, a Young Adult novel, and a non-fiction book about grief and hawking (that’s raising a hawk, not spitting), so there’s something for everyone! She also did a video on Penguin Platform’s channel about tips on how to deal with day-to-day anxiety, which we also highly recommend.

So there you have it…

Five More of the Best: Videos About Mental Health. It’s so important that we continue the conversation about mental illnesses and make sure people are educated and aware of just how common they can be. And remember, never be afraid to seek advice and ask for help when you need it – we all need a little help now and again.

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