OUR VISION

Our vision is to raise awareness on mental health, in being a safe platform where people can turn to without having to worry about judgements. Mental health will be talked about like physical health. Everyone and anyone – no matter if they are living with mental illness or not – should be treated equally and without discrimination. Lancaster, as a community, will welcome open discussions about mental well-being. To achieve this, we aimed for a more public, online approach and promoted the majority of our work through social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

This helps us reach a larger group of audiences because this approach allows different followers to choose which social media platform is the most comfortable to use. For instance, on Facebook, most users have to sign up using their real names, so they may be uncomfortable with reaching out to us; however, with Twitter and Instagram, users are allowed to make an account anonymously, which some people will find more reassuring and safe when discussing mental health.

More importantly, our goal is to educate people in Lancaster so they will know who they need to contact when they go through a difficult time. We will promote all the available services within the University – whether it be the mental health services at The Base, the well-being officers within colleges, the Lancaster Nightline etc. However, we are not working hand-in-hand with the University, and this approach is effective because we do not wish to endorse the official services at Lancaster University, especially because we are aware that there are certain problems within the system itself. Rather, our reason for promoting the available services is to ensure that people are getting the help they need at the right places, but at the same time highlighting the systematic issues and encourage the university to make improvements.