Students from TV Production courses worked on briefs with the NHS to produce a series of films to use to help staff and patients.

Student films shine a light on mental health issues

Feature

Film, TV and media

Opening slide reads: TV Production students from Solent University, Southampton have been working with Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust to deliver a set of videos to raise awareness for Mental Health Awareness Week (15-21 May)

Dr Steve Tomkins, Chief Medical Officer, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust talking to the camera.

What really stand out is just their fresh eyes. Quite often it's the first time they've come to certain areas of mental health and they don't know about it. Just when you start in any new area you see things that perhaps someone like myself who's been involved in the area for a couple of decades has stopped seeing so it's that vibrancy it's the professionalism and those new eyes; it just really comes through.

Student, Alex Atkinson talking to the camera. Cut-aways to clips from Alex's video.

Ours was about mental health with people in the trans community. So ours was very much about digging into who these people are that we'd interview, what they're going through, what they had gone through in the past, and how they they got the help they needed to get through it and to be in a better place than they are now and to send out the message that things will get better for people currently going through that.

Senior lecturer, Kate O'Driscoll talking to the camera.

The students learn by doing so they really get to experience what it is like to be professional, to work with clients, to work to a brief and respond to that brief, to go out and work with contributors - in this case both NHS staff and patients - and then to receive feedback on their work, both from myself and the client, and be able to respond to that feedback and deliver a project that everybody is happy with. 

Clip shows people holding hands, followed by a contributor to one of the student films talking to camera.

The patient is at the heart of everything that gets done; whatever needs to be done to keep them happy, to keep them content and to ensure that they are safe will be done.

Student, Ida Ronning talking to the camera.

I think it's so much different than just working like amongst the students because you actually have actual contributors and you have actual people, like your clients, who you have to work for so it really pushes you to work to a more professional standard and things that you would be like,  "oh it's fine" you don't do that because you really have to think, "oh this is actually going to an external place as well it's not just going on within us or  just on Solent channels, it's actually going to the NHS". So many people are potentially going to see this piece of work that you're going to put your name on, so it's really good work experience just within the actual course for you and it really helps you learn how it actually is in the professional industry.

Senior lecturer, Kate O'Driscoll talking to the camera. Cut-aways to one of the student films.

What impresses me most about them is their ability to go out into the world as ambassadors for the course, but also for the University, to conduct themselves in such a professional way to be able to empathise with the contributors that they meet and they work with, to be sensitive to those contributors and listen to their stories, and be able to then tell those stories within a film.

It's really informative and really eye-opening to see what these people were going through. I really wanted to get this out even more so because I was like, "oh people need to to hear these stories; people need to see them" so that was such a big motivator after hearing that and I was like, "okay, yeah, let's 100 per cent do this".

Clips from some of the student films. Dr Steve Tomkins talking to the camera.

All the videos that were produced last year have helped people. They will have saved countless lives and I'm eternally grateful to the students for the work that they've done.

Solent's brand graphic. A red wave made of multiple thin strips appears from left of screen, rippling across left to right, before curving back across the camera and filling the screen with red. The red shrinks down to the Solent logo in centre screen: a red circle with white text reading Solent University, Southampton.