Mental health, yes, I’m going to go there, it’s a hot topic of conversation, in society in general and naturally in the advertising and film industries. And yet, on the ground, he feels like a secretive subject, fearful of what it might do to his reputation, and thus his next job offer.
On screen, brands are keen to align themselves with the cause and encourage consumers to pay attention to how they feel. Many companies and agencies are also having conversations and implementing support programs. But specifically in production, an industry that I’ve been a part of for 15 years and produce for 12 years, we’re light years apart..
Many of the people I work with are understandably wary of speaking out or speaking out at all when it comes to mental health. Although society has come a long way in its attitudes towards mental health, particularly around issues such as anxiety and depression, there is still a strong stigma attached to these issues in the making.
In my experience, the way the production industry works means it’s easy for these issues to arise, proliferate, and get brushed aside, since the priority is getting the job done (and getting it done on time). How bad are things really? There is no direct research on production within advertising, however The Film and TV Charity has done research involving people working behind the scenes in film, television and cinema, from which we can extrapolate some facts.
charity did find Compared to previous years, there were more open conversations about mental health in 2021. Another positive was the boom in production currently taking place in the UK, but there is a negative to this, with 78% of respondents noted that work intensity, such as longer hours, had an adverse effect on their mental health, compared to 63% in 2019. Only 10% of all respondents agreed that the industry was a healthy environment to work for, a frankly shocking statistic, considering the number of people the industry employs. One silver lining has been the APA’s recommendations to keep filming hours to 12 hours per day and not budget or overschedule in the bidding process to help reduce demands on production crews and safeguard crew well-being.
job security
Whether you’re a freelancer or not, we all know the importance of a good reputation when it comes to booking your next gig. People are often hired by word of mouth and without the backing of representation, freelancers rely on a good word from one production to the next for their income. It’s no wonder so many in production are concerned that talking about their mental health, or working conditions that affect their mental health, could affect their earning potential.
Covid didn’t help either. Not everyone can transition to virtual production easily, the fear of not being rehired or having a reputation for things like missing work and not putting in overtime is very real. This is where I see the biggest disparity: no one would bat an eye if someone called and said they couldn’t get in due to a broken arm or even the aforementioned covid. I have yet to see someone cite their mental health as a reason for missing work.
We’re all comfortable enough discussing mental health in abstract terms, but no one wants to be the one to stand up and associate with any of the multiple mental health issues we know exist.
I myself have been through periods where I have struggled with my own mental health and in particular experienced a kind of burnout in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic and the first lockdown. The silver lining here was that I had the time and space to work on what I was experiencing, to process it, without it affecting my work.
It is a statistical impossibility that no one in production has a problem that they are dealing with at any given time; Mind reports that in the UK one of four people will face a mental health problem every year. People in production are no different, which means we’ve all been around someone struggling, or been struggling ourselves. If the average production has a team of, say, 45-65 a day, that means at the low end, 11.2 team members (out of 45) are dealing with something. That’s an entire department or all HODs!
And believe me, there have been many times on set or at jobs where I thought about taking the first flight to Acapulco as the pressure of stress got to me, but I had to find a way to dig in and continue, and that’s so much easier. say it than do it.
A gender issue
There is another elephant in the room that we need to address when it comes to mental health and production. It’s still a largely white male-dominated industry (a topic that needs its own discussion) and men are much worse at talking about their problems than women. Again, I can only speak for myself, my male peers, and the culture we inherited from previous generations, but it’s obvious to me that we’ve been socialized not to talk about the emotional aspects of our lives, and I’m definitely not at work. . While this is changing for Gen Z, it’s not changing fast enough for everyone else.
Any UFC fan might recently remember Paddy Pimblett giving an emotional speech about men’s mental health and the need to speak up after losing one of his best friends to suicide. It’s so refreshing to see this in a sport so driven by male testosterone that, one could argue, it’s like the production industry.
With that in mind, the production becomes a perfect microcosm for mental health issues to play out. The pressure, the hours, the fear of not getting another job generate more repression and more shame because we worry about the possible consequences. About how we will be perceived from the point of ‘admitting weaknesses’.
If the pandemic has taught me anything, it is that we are all much more similar than we think, all susceptible to the same forces, and we could all have more empathy for one another. And it’s good to talk a lot more than we think. To be honest, I’m not sure what change looks like for the production industry when it comes to mental health – it’s a complex issue that needs to be addressed on a macro and micro scale. Perhaps we could start by taking a moment before each session and reiterating that if someone is feeling down, physically or mentally, they can take a break or leave, and we can offer support.
Maybe we should all start sharing the mental health issues we’ve dealt with in the past, if we’re not currently dealing with them. It sounds a bit utopian, but any step in the right direction will begin to ease the pressure and feelings of isolation that many of us feel. It’s not a perfect solution, but we have to start somewhere.
So the next time someone sees me on set or in a meeting, in Paddy’s words, “If you have a weight on your shoulders for whatever reason, talk to somebody, talk to anybody. I’d rather you cry on my shoulder than go to your funeral. But let’s end on a less somber note; read the above again. And let’s keep talking…
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