The idea behind Public Prescription is to highlight the unsolicited advice we receive about mental health and how they can be extremely hurtful and detrimental to someone who is living with a mental illness. Often these pieces of advice come from a place of ignorance, and that is something the series hopes to address by increasing awareness and understanding framed by empathy.
The idea for the series came about after a lot of discussions with people about how strangers and even their loved ones responded to a conversation about mental health. Of course a lot of these phrases come from personal anecdotes gathered over the years too. There are many layers to unpacking the stigma associated with mental health, public prescription, hopes to create a space to initiate some of those conversations.
Public Prescription is a self initiated project that has received press mentions in AJ+ by Al Jazeera, Buzzfeed India, Metro.co.uk and The Mighty.