Belgian Red Nose Day Films Address Teenage Mental Health
While Christmas lights are on and general cheer if in the air, here’s a sombre reminder to take a closer look at your kids comes our way.
This year, Belgium returns with a new campaign for Red Nose Day charity, crafted by a diverse drama director Guy Goossens (el Colony) in a series of three films, talking about teenage mental health issues.
In 2016, VTM, Qmusic, Belfius and FLEXUS (Belgium) won an Effie Award with the Red Nose Campaign. For the new edition they refined the strategic structure of the last campaign. The special focus this time is on mental health in our schools: a theme that has been avoided, for most part, if not a taboo.
On regular school days kids spend more time with their classmates than with their family. Every second teacher in Flanders is confronted weekly with pupils with psychological problems. Half of Flemish students indicate that they have mental issues. This is a disturbing statistic, but something largely avoided.
Lifting the taboo on the subject will help us pay attention to the vulnerable kids.
Raising awareness remains an important goal of Red Nose Day: in everyone's neighbourhood and / or family children and young people are fighting with psychological problems.
Belgian director Guy Goossens took on a difficult task of creating the inner and outer worlds of kids with mental issues by crafting a superb dramatic performance, where each kid has a dark, controlling, bullying double. The aim is to make people feel what these young people are experiencing, as far as possible. That is why the agency and client departed from the insight that a mental illness comes like a sort of haze over your experience of the world. The disease makes you a different person than you actually are. It literally takes over your life.
