Royal Ottawa Hospital begins mental illness awareness campaign
By Adnews Staff
The Royal Ottawa Hospital has begun a new advertising campaign intended to raise awareness of the prevalence of mental illness and to encourage resident of eastern Ontario to donate funds to the hospital’s new mental health facility, which will open on Nov. 1. The campaign will make use of full-page print ads in the Ottawa Citizen and Le Droit. The campaign will run for two months. During the first four weeks, the campaign will seek to educate readers about mental illness with creative intended to place the reader inside the mind of a person with depression, schizophrenia, addiction and anxiety. The second phase of the effort will focus on the brain as an organ with creative that highlights regions of the brain responsible for certain behaviours and emotions. According to the institution, the overall goal is to reduce the fear and stigma often associated with mental illness. “The ads are meant to be provocative, and perhaps for some, they may even be controversial,” said Kathryn Hendrick, vice-president of communications at the hospital. “We had to come up with a way to cut through the relentless information overload that exists in our daily lives. We tried to create broader relevance among the general public, to bring mental health issues out of the dark corner of medicine. We want to be provocative, but more importantly, we want to open minds and ultimately inspire action.” The campaign will also include a series of public information sessions on various subjects related to mental health, such as Alzheimer’s disease, mental illness in teenagers, stress, grief management, sleep disorders, gambling addiction and treatments for depression.