Each year as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, Digital Spy writers share their experiences of how entertainment can be part of the conversation around mental illness.
University, for me, was rife with anxiety. The things that can trigger worry during those years – exams, stressful living situations, big life decisions and long, dormant summers – bubbled away in me to cause a perfect storm of tornado panic attacks, long, drizzly periods of anxiety, many emotional heatwaves and a downpour of accompanying physical symptoms.
When I found an outlet I clung to it. And that escape, for me, was E4's My Mad Fat Diary.
There were very few things during that period that could completely hold my attention but this charming, dark-at-times, teenage comedy had me square-eyed and blissfully lost.
I related entirely to Rae Earl, the main character who had lost touch with her friends after a spell in a mental health facility and was consequently struggling to fit in.
I’m not trying to be dramatic and claim I was anywhere near needing serious medical attention for my anxiety like Rae was for her depression in the programme. I wasn’t. I would never want to over-dramatise a topic in which the worst end of the scale is so terrifying. Especially when, on a daily basis, people use mental-health terminology carelessly, bandying words like 'OCD' and 'depressed' like they’re commonplace adjectives.
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I related to her because her mental health was her secret and she tried to keep it together on the outside. I related to her – as I’m sure a lot of uni girls did and would – because she was self-conscious. And I related to her because she was navigating relationships with friends, family and love interests.
On that note, it’s not all deep and meaningful. I also felt at one with Rae because she fancied Finn (played by Nico Mirallegro) and he was a good-enough distraction in himself.
I used to watch My Mad Fat Diary by myself, in my uni room, and feel completely engaged for the entire hour. I watched repeats of them when I needed a bit of a time-out. I re-watched the first series a few years after uni, having moved to London, and it had the exact same effect.
I’m not the only one to have been so taken by the series. In an interview with The Independent, Sharon Rooney, who plays Rae, was asked what response she got the most from viewers when the programme was aired from 2013 to 2015.
She said: "It’s more people getting in touch to say they’ve got help, which is the best feeling ever. I’ve never won an Oscar but I imagine it’s up there with that feeling, to have someone say 'You’ve changed my life.'"
In times when we are being (rightly, in my opinion) encouraged to engage in less screen time, what we choose to watch on TV is important. Our telly time should be a form of self-care in itself, and we should choose only to watch the things that make us smarter, happier and better.
I’ll be forever grateful for Rae for making me feel just that, at a time when I really needed it.
We would encourage anyone who identifies with the topics raised in this article to reach out. Organisations who can offer support include Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org) or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to visit mentalhealth.gov or the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Emma-Louise Pritchard is the Membership Director for Country Living UK & House Beautiful UK, previously Executive Digital Editor for Country Living UK. Emma-Louise is a digital expert specialising in content strategy, social media and newsletters. Her topics include sustainability, homes and interiors, gardening, health and wellbeing, pets, travel and countryside news. She has previously written for Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan and has won several awards, from AOP Digital Editor of the Year 2019 to PPA 30 Under 30. Emma-Louise studied at Cardiff University where she completed an MA in Magazine Journalism.
