PR Campaign
In the course, each student had to choose their own topic to work independently first, then few came up together and picked 1 topic they wanted to. On the first day, I pitched my topic about mental health since there were on-going cases of some Korean committed to suicide due to depression and I thought nowadays people were more aware of that but did not have knowledge as words mentioned about depression description among children usually appeared “crazy”, “disturbed”, “nuts” or “psycho” towards the issue (Rose, 2007).
My Role
Target Audience
Parents for sure would be the target audience for this campaign, who were expecting and teaching their children achieving high scores at school, well-behaved and healthy. As they focused strongly about their son/daughter’s performance, they forgot to spend notice on their children’s emotions.
Planning
Children received negative labels from peers when they confessed having mental issues, which made them keep the silence when having difficulties as they did not want to be perceived “crazy”, “nuts” or “weak” and parents' expectations considered were about grades, chores or no school-relationships. In order to help children had an open environment to raise their voices freely to their beloved and for parents to understand before it is too late. It was called “Dear Mom & Dad” - like a letter, a confession of a son/daughter keeping for a long time.
Leadership
As I came up with this topic at the first time in my individual project, I took the role of team leader to give other members information that they need to know, some good researches, what I tended to do next and asked for their opinions. I also divided the work due to members’ strengths and needs. It was hard but fun time back then as we debated a lot but hard work paid off, we received a distinction recognition from the lecturer.
#quote of the day
50% of the population has limited knowledge about mental health problems in general"
Hong (2008)
