Let's get creative with awareness
Complex topics like suicide, psychosis, and trauma can be difficult to translate into engaging and educational resources. Stories are the key - using empathy to impact people and systems. The goal might be to influence policy, raise funds, or inspire community action.
Behind the scenes
Entertainment-education is a type of narrative messaging intervention that emotionally involves the viewer in the storyline, and aims to effect social change - which can occur at the level of individual, community, or society. Essentially, the goal is to deliver prosocial health messages to positively influencing awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and/or behaviors.
Theories to apply in mental health storytelling may include:
- Transportation Theory (Green and Brock)
- The extent that individuals are absorbed into a story (identification)
- The Identification Scale (Cohen)
- The extent to which viewers identify with a character
- Entertainment Overcoming Resistance Model (Moyer-Guse).
- The narrative format increases absorption in the drama, reducing resistance to the messaging.
- Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty, Cacioppo, Shrum)
- Immersive engagement making it easier to influence beliefs, attitudes, and behavior.
- Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura)
- The most commonly applied theory in the area of entertainment-education
Clients have included
Mental Health Innovation
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