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28 | ENGAGING SCIENCE
Unmasking
mental health
Several projects are helping to foster a more informed
and compassionate view of mental health issues.
Bare to be
different
‘Naked Scientist’ nabs Royal Society
award for science communication.
1 2 3
Mental health conditions are common
but plagued by stereotyping and
stigmatisation. Raising awareness of
the realities of such conditions lies at
the heart of a series of projects using
film, drama and the web to
communicate the life experiences of
people and families affected by
autism, schizophrenia and epilepsy.
Sue Ziebland at the University of Oxford
and colleagues have launched two new
sections of the award-winning website
www.healthtalkonline.org. ‘Life on the
Autism Spectrum’ features video and
audio clips of interviews recounting the
experiences of 20 adults with autism,
while ‘Parents of Children with Autism’
features 45 such parents.
The interviews are supplemented with
evidence-based information about the
conditions, their management and
available treatments. The aim is to give
people with mental health conditions and
their families an understanding of the
experiences, difficulties – and joys – they
are likely to encounter, and to help them
to make informed choices about treatment.
Cardboard Citizens – the UK’s only
homeless people’s professional theatre
company – received funding to develop
the famous Georg Büchner play Woyzeck
as an interactive forum theatre production.
The play – a vehicle for exploring
schizophrenia – was performed for three
weeks at the Southwark Playhouse in
London, reaching an audience of more
than 1500 people over 18 performances.
The theatre company, with Adrian
Jackson as Artistic Director, worked with
a team of mental health specialists to
ensure that mental health issues were
portrayed accurately. More than 100
audience members got on the stage and
experimented with strategies for
confronting and helping someone with
schizophrenia throughout the run.
At the Institute of Psychiatry, Elizabeth
Kuipers and colleagues at the South
London and Maudsley NHS Trust and
Rethink are expanding their website
dedicated to supporting people with
mental illness. The aim is to involve carers
more in the research process, and
disseminate research findings to patients,
carers and the wider public.
Finally, Media Trust Productions have
produced five 30-minute films exploring
the impact of living with chronic
conditions such as cystic fibrosis, autism,
Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and
multiple sclerosis. The series, What Can
Science Do For Me?, was broadcast on
the Community Channel early in 2008,
attracting 325 000 viewers, while another
40 000 users accessed the films on the
Community Channel’s website. The films
can be viewed on the Community
Channel’s broadband player.
Chris Smith, Clinical Lecturer and
Specialist Registrar in virology at the
University of Cambridge, is better
known for his radio show Naked
Scientists (part-funded by a Wellcome
Trust Society Award in 2005), and
accompanying podcasts and books.
Dr Smith’s pioneering show makes
complex scientific material
accessible to non-scientific
audiences worldwide. In August 2008,
he was awarded the Royal Society’s
prestigious Kohn Award for his work.
The Naked Scientists show is a lighthearted
look at what is happening each
week in the world of science, technology
and medicine, interspersed with popular
chart music. Guest interviewees have
included Sir Martin Rees, astronomer
and President of the Royal Society,
Sir Alec Jeffreys, inventor of DNA
fingerprinting, and James Watson,
co-discoverer of the DNA double helix.
Dr Smith’s informal approach, stripping
science down to its bare essentials, has
captured the imagination of the listening
public. To encourage debate and add a
practical, visual aspect to the medium of
radio, he has tested out new ideas such
as the weekly ‘kitchen science’
experiments. Listeners can take part in
simple home experiments alongside the
broadcast and compete to be the first
Images
1 A scene from the Cardboard Citizens version of Woyzeck.
2 A scene from the What Can Science Do For Me? programme
on cystic fibrosis.
3 Chris Smith, the Naked Scientist.
4 Soundtrack to a Naked Scientists radio show.