PROJECT SEMICOLON
Project Semicolon is an American nonprofit organization founded in 2013 by Amy Bleuel. The organization was first founded as a tribute to Amy’s father, who died by suicide ten-years prior. The movement aims to “present hope and love to those who are struggling with depression, suicide, addiction, and self-injury"[1]. The movement gained public recognition in early 2015 when people started posting pictures of their semicolon tattoos on social media to show their support. Several cast members of the Netflix original television series ‘13 Reasons Why’, along with Selena Gomez (who is one of the executive producers of the show), also got the semicolon tattoo.
Our involvement with mental wellbeing in Lancaster began when we were working on a journalism project about the services at University. Although, we have gotten some positive comments about the mental health services that Lancaster University provides for the student body, there have been many comments that reflected an inconsistency in their services. From this project, we decided to use this opportunity to expand our work to reach out to more students in the University and the area by not only reporting the information we collected but also using the data we have to promote better mental wellbeing services in Lancaster. January 20, 2020 was the start date for our social media movement. On this day we also created all of our social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram) and our website. On February 25, 2020, we started our real-world action. To continue, on February 18, 2020 we further uploaded our first video, which aimed to inform people of our manifesto/purpose. Our real-life action took place in Alexandra Square on the 25th of February, where people answered our questions about mental health on campus, while we handed out flyers and stickers. Our second video, which included a montage of these answers, was released one week later. For more details on our history, please look at our “Timeline of Accomplishments” section.
[1] Project Semicolon. (2017). About Project Semicolon. [online] Available at: https://projectsemicolon.com/about-project-semicolon/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2020].
OUR INSPIRATION
Lancaster Mental Health Project - the inspiration for the Semicolon Project
Mental health is increasingly being brought into conversation in mainstream social media, as an effort of ‘breaking the stigma’ surrounding its discourse within the public sphere. Alongside this newfound attention aimed towards it, there is also an attempt to educate people on it, usually through targeting the different parts of society where issues are more prevalent; one of the latter is manifested within young adults between the ages of 18 to 25, with data showing that 27% of students in higher education reported having mental health issues (Aronin and Smith, 2016).