A new project, #IAmStigmaFree, features LDS women sharing their personal stories of living with mental illness.
Featuring women who struggle with addictions, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and more, the campaign is made up of a number of videos where each woman discusses her struggles and how she fights to overcome them. This new project was created by Ashley Sargeant, the founder of Don’t Stop Sargeant, a website dedicated to providing resources and help to early-returned missionaries and those who struggle with mental illness.
New videos will be released each day this week, culminating in a music video with all of the women on October 31.
“About a month ago I heard Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” for the first time and instantly fell in love with it. This was during the month of September and my social media feeds were exploding with posts about mental health awareness and suicide prevention, as is tradition each year. I felt impressed to add my voice to this very important conversation in a creative and memorable way but I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it,” said Sargeant in her blog post discussing the project.
To read more about this project and see more videos on LDSDaily, click here.
AllisonOctober 29, 2015
Amazing work, and I have been doing the same but in a different type of way since about 2004! Being open and sharing with others has been an amazing joy, that has been my reason to fight from mental health and physical health, both chronic. I would be willing to help or promote any way you may need, and thank you for your efforts!
Ashley SargeantOctober 28, 2015
Thank you so much for the feature! I need to let you know that not all of the women in our video are LDS, so could you please edit the title and content to not make it sound like all 17 of us are? That would be so helpful! Thanks again for sharing our story!