Behind The Face Origins 

Campaign Profile & Goals 

Behind The Face is an activist campaign created by a group of students at The University of Cincinnati. The group used social media platforms to reach their audience and send out their message. #Behindtheface focused on mental health awareness, by creating this campaign of support and de-stigmatization, we hope to spread the message that mental health issues are an everyday occurrence.

● Understanding what mental stress is and how to positively cope with that stress during college.

● Establishing #BehindtheFace around UC's campus (flyers, table promotions) and online social medias such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr.

● Provide local and national resources to help aid students or an individual dealing with mental stress.

● Inform the student body for why there is a need for pursuing this campaign and validating that mental stress is not only a common issue for a college student but it is a serious issue on college campuses.

● Removing the shame of admitting an individual’s mental health issues and providing positive ways to cope with their stress via resources or personal narratives.

● Pursuing students to include their own personal narrative on our website.

● Coordinating with the University of Cincinnati’s planned scheduled events such as “stress less week”, to raise awareness and have a physical presence around our campus.

What is Mental Health Awareness?

“At the root of the dilemma is the way we view mental health in this country. Whether an illness affects your heart, your leg, or your brain, it's still an illness, and there should be no distinction.” - First Lady Michelle Obama

The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that one in five Americans will be affected by a mental health condition in their lifetime.1 Mental health awareness includes promoting mental health as “a critical part of overall wellness, including prevention services for all early identification and intervention for those at risk, and integrated care and treatment for those who need it, with recovery as the goal.” 2.  Many people do not adequately include their mental health when they think of their own health. Mental health awareness is a way to make people pay attention to their own mental health as well as the mental health of others. Mental health awareness is also a way to defeat the stigma surrounding mental illness by providing accurate and non stereotyped information. Removing the stigma that surrounds mental illnesses is an important part of mental health awareness. Three out of four people with a mental illness report that they have experienced stigma. Stigma is when a person or group of people are set apart. They are labeled and stereotyped with negative attitudes. Stigma brings shame, more stress, and leads people to be reluctant to seek help for their mental illness. Families of people with mental illnesses are also affected by stigma, leading to a lack of support. 3 For us, mental health awareness is a way for people with mental illnesses to know that they are not alone as well as for people without mental illnesses to see people separate from their illnesses. By spreading information to reduce stigma and promote overall health, mental health awareness contributes to a healthier community.

1. https://www.nami.org/Get-Involved/Awareness-Events/Mental-Health-Month

2. http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/about-us

3. http://www.mentalhealth.wa.gov.au/mental_illness_and_health/mh_stigma.aspx

What is Stress Management?

“In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.”

-Lee Iacocca, American automobile executive

Managing stress is little more than finding ways to relax your mind. One of these methods is to simply write. It may help to write about things that are bothering you. Write for 10 to 15 minutes a day about stressful events and how they made you feel to get that pressure off your chest. This helps you find out what is causing your stress and how much stress you feel. After you know, you can find better ways to cope. Similarly, another tactic is to let your feelings out. Talk, laugh, cry, and express anger when you need to. Talking with friends, family, a counselor, or a member of the clergy about your feelings is a healthy way to relieve stress. Finally, you can do something you enjoy. You may feel that you're too busy to do these things. But making time to do something you enjoy can help you relax and takes your mind off the problems in your life. You can explore different hobbies such as gardening or you can play with pets or do something creative. You can also volunteer and help others, which often can make your self feel better.

http://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/stress-management-relieving-stress

Despite a wide variety of healthy ways one can cope with stress, Unhealthy methods of coping with stress also exist. These coping strategies may temporarily reduce stress and bring out happiness but they cause more damage in the long run: Activities such as smoking or binge drinking cause these reactions. In actuality, any sort of addiction or overuse of foods, drugs or activities can lead to negative effects on a person. Events such as this that attempt to avoid one’s problems and ignore pressing issues eventually add up and create more difficult or concerning issues. Finally, negatively manifesting your emotions in the form of anger or sadness directed at others only worsens stress and life issues and brings about no release from the stress and emotional problems people are dealing with.

http://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-management.htm

Managing stress is also sometimes about fulfilling and pleasing the body and mind. Mentally, using humor quickly and efficiently reduces stress by releasing chemicals in the brain through laughter. Taking your mind off issues and directing your attention to something funny distracts you and diffuses your stress with something light hearted. Stress is also effectively mitigated through physical changes and events. For example, taking a brisk walk outside and leaving your previous environment counteracts the physical feelings and effects of stress. Your mind is forced to leave its previous location and setting of stressfulness and is allowed freedom and physical pleasure from movement. This same theory is applied in other ways such as drinking extra water or taking an extra nap. Fueling your body with essential needs such as sleep, exercise or water fulfills physical stress and promotes physical well-being. Simply, when your body feels good, your mind also feels good and stress is minimized from health sources that can easily be avoided.

http://www.businessballs.com/stressmanagement.htm

Campaign Framework and Activist Origins:

            Social Media and Activism

Social Media is a key component of our campaign because sites like FaceBook, Twitter, and instagram have become powerful platforms to share stories and connect with others. Stories shared on social media can reach far beyond the original audience and change the way people think and act. Movements on social media empower people to say what is on their mind when they otherwise might not want to or be able to speak out in person. With an issue as private as mental health issues, we wanted to use social media as a safer, more private environment, to share stories and issues of students who attend the University.

Social media is a way to bring people together when they otherwise might not be able to talk to anyone about their problems. It is a way for people to put their problems out in the open and find the ones who share similar problems. Social media also provides a variety of platforms that allow us to communicate with several different styles. The platforms often complement each other and can be used in conjunction with each other to increase the ability to share and spread one’s story.

We created #BehindTheFace to provide a common way to connect people sharing their stories across most social media platforms. This hashtag serves as a private community that allows students at the University of Cincinnati to tell their story in a more comfortable manner. It creates a community that is filled with individuals who are experiencing the same difficulties and marks someone or their post as a part of a larger collective. Without the hashtag, it would be harder for people to find a common place to talk about their problems, and the campaign would be much less effective.

            Storytelling and Activism

“Stories have power. They delight, enchant, touch, teach, recall, inspire, motivate, challenge. They help us understand. They imprint a picture on our minds. Want to make a point or raise an issue? Tell a story.” —Janet Litherland, Renowned Author

Personal narratives were an integral part of our Behind The Face campaign. Allowing testimonies has long been used to draw out and address the overwhelming presence of ills of society. Relating this to our campaign, mental illness and stress were thrust into the spotlight as numerous pieces were shared via social media and the Internet. Specifically, these stories can instill readers with a sense of community, and the recognition of issues that strike close to home. The appeal to emotion is what drives this technique; we want to feel alive, moved, and inspired. Encouraging engagement further allows for growth and support within a movement. Personal experiences can act as a bridge to the larger political and cultural issues ever present within our society. Narratives have the ability to take a large scale problem, and focus it down to a personal level.

When applying this technique to our campaign, we first turned to our fellow classmates. Each of us created our own testimony, sharing our personal experiences of mental health or stress. Immediately, the class began to coalesce, building bonds with each other over simple testaments. Immediately, everyone was shocked by the adversity and trials that the individuals we sit next to every day go through. Seeing the power that this held within the walls of our class, we decided to invite the rest of the Bearcat community to participate in an attempt to build solidarity. Within our website, a page was devoted to the sharing of stories from page visitors. Welcoming them to participate allows them to create a direct connection to the cause, while simultaneously enlarging our audience.

http://www.thestorytellers.com/the-power-of-storytelling

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/positively-media/201101/the-psychological-power-storytelling

            Campus Events and Embodied Activism

College campuses are fantastic grounds for embodied activism, especially UC. Students are breaking free from their sheltered lives as children and are beginning to form their own interests, thoughts, and opinions. Students want to learn about current events, relevant issues to their relevant demographics, and become engaged in causes of meaning to them. Students are willing to accept and don marketing materials such as free t-shirts, buttons, and stickers. This allows students to become walking billboards for causes they care about, spreading awareness and gaining support.

There are thousands of students walking across campus every day, and this can be perfect for spreading awareness, campaigning, and drawing people into activism campaigns. On many sunny afternoons during spring semester, one can find multiple tabling events happening on Mainstreet while walking to class.

It is extremely easy to reach large portions of the student body using physical presence on campus for marketing. Examples of recent groups that have successfully used this model include PAC’s Stress Less Fest, Student Government’s 20,000 Bearcats campaign, and Going Grey UC. Social media is also a popular method of engaging students in activism. Most groups utilize social media accounts in their efforts to spread awareness of their projects and events occurring on campus. The events mentioned above heavily used social media presence along with their physical presence on campus. Social media can be used to inform followers about upcoming events, to raise funds through online donation platforms, and raise awareness about the cause or relevant issues.

Contributors: Benjamin Immell, Kaitlyn Luckey, Lauren McAndrew, Surya Elangovan, Robert Kuyath, Caitlann Walker, Kellee O’Shaughnessy, Lauren Higginbotham, Bryan Felix, Rachel Lehn, Micah Nieder, Mitchell Milum.