Time to Stop Male Suicide (SMS)

Over the last month we have been working with Guernsey Mind to raise awareness of male suicide here in Guernsey. Filming began back in early February with further interviews taking place that month, and today they launched their campaign to the public. Our filming journey found us interviewing a range of different subjects who all shared stories highlighting that male suicide is a problem here in Guernsey. It was startling to hear that suicide is the biggest killer of men between the ages of 20 and 50. The message to the Guernsey audience is that ”Together we can stop male suicide’.

We were humbled, not only to be invited to produce the video content for Guernsey Mind’s campaign, but to hear from those individuals affected by male suicide and those groups looking to offer support to those affected. We heard from two groups doing tremendous work with men of all ages and we heard first hand, how their groups had already made a difference here in the community. We heard from two individuals, one who’s brother took his life on boxing day who shared how it has affected his family years after the event, whilst the other subject shared how they have overcome the suicidal thoughts they encountered many years ago.

The campaign is a multi-media awareness raising campaign, with content spread across print and online via social media and electronic newsletters. We were tasked with providing all the video content for the campaign, which had already been branded by the charity’s locally appointed design agency. We were able to incorporate all of their existing branding into the campaign which fell under the ‘Stop Male Suicide’ campaign mantra. We provided a 10 minute headline video compiling all of the key messages with an attention grabbing one minute sting for social media to help drive traffic to the overall video. We supplemented this with four individual videos from each of the subjects we filmed, showcasing their headline promotional messages from each interview, that would run on their social media channels. For those viewers looking to hear the whole story from each of our campaign subjects, we uploaded all four videos to their YouTube channel in full so you can hear everything they had to say.

We were shocked to hear that male suicide kills more men aged 20-50 than cancer and heart disease. We hope that our involvement in this campaign helps to raise the awareness of this male struggle which, more often than not, goes unrecognised and under the radar. If you do one thing differently after hearing about this campaign, let the individual know you are there, send a text, an email or make phone call. You could save a life.