Research

Doing research is a main factor to making the best 3MW that I can, not only that but it gives me a better understanding of what I am trying to do and also trying to understand the person that I am doing the documentary on. I think that when conducting my interview I may also have a better understanding to connect with her and also make myself have facts and more knowledge in general. So I have set out to research a tonne of things to give me more details and factors about the things she suffers with and then to learn some statistics about it all. For the course of this unit I will use the pseudonym 'Kayla' to keep the identity of my friend hidden.

Firstly I went on to research just some general facts about mental health and some statistics behind it all. Not knowing where to search I simply went to Google which is the search engine I wanted to use, I searched for mental health statistics and this is the first search that came up and this was where I fund some statistics about a few topics in the mental health area, I read through and highlighted factors that were important to me, this was quite a useful piece which gave me a few general numbers about it all and they are some pretty big numbers, meaning that there are a lot of issues with mental health within young adults and children. So this to me is a good topic which I feel I will find quite a bit of research in.

After looking into this I went on to ask Kayla briefly what were the main issues in her life that are currently affecting her, this was just so I could prepare more research and know what I could focus on that she was comfortable talking about for when I interviewed her. She said that her main issue was her self harm and this would probably be the main focus that we might talk about, she also said that her ADHD and eating disorders would be other factors that contribute to how she is now, not only that but how it was made worse by the fact she has been bullied.






These would be the main factors that I would look into as these were the points Kayla made about what her issues are now. Firstly, I looked into self harm as I knew this would be the main factor I wanted to focus on and I found out some facts about it, finding a site which gave me some answers to why people self harm, as you can see in the image to the left there are a range of reasons and explanations to why people may self harm, and sometimes it can't be explained. I went back to Kayla and asked her why she self harmed and she couldn't give me an answer straight away other than the need to kill herself. That was quite shocking to hear and I asked her why but she couldn't give me one straight answer to why, as she said there are so many little things and reasons to what's bought her to where she is now. I found she definitely could be like how this page explained as there are a range of answers to why her self harm happens.




After finding research in the issues that are affecting her now I looked a little more into what affected her in her childhood as she had a troubled childhood suffering with child abuse, I feel that this may have affected how she may be now as this could link in with the other research I found saying that experiences from the past can affect you now. Looking at the website there was a little quote which  gave me a definition of mental health, as you can see it can affect a lot of thins in later life, not saying that all or this is how Kayla is now, I'm giving a general definition of what the website told me. The website further went on with some studies that had been conducted and this gave some results of how people were and had issues with, they didn't seem to be as much importance to me as much as the bottom paragraph was, as it gave a list of things that adults feel now (although Kayla may not be classed as an adult yet, this still has a link with how she may feel) These were really interesting things to read and learn about because these are some of the descriptive words that Kayla has told me she feels most of the time, it was also quite shocking to learn.

I have highlighted all of the problems that have and still do affect her, that's a lot of highlighted areas, which is why I feel that looking into her abuse may be a root I could take, though  it might also be a sensitive subject for her to talk about.




Going back to actually making a documentary, I needed to get a little primary research from peers, I made a short five question survey which just asked some questions about if people had watched documentaries, heard of three minute wonders and if they would be interested in my documentary,  after I had made this I then posted it onto Facebook, as you can see in the image, and I also posted it on other social media sites.

After having got a few responses, I then had a look at the results that I got to see if people would be interested in the documentary that I would be making, I found that there were a range of results actually and that the results for wanting to see my documentary were evenly shared, though some people weren't sure whether or not they would want to watch it, I then later specified if they would be interested in learning about self harm and eating disorders, in which to my surprise, people actually did. Even though I only had a small amount of replies, things still look like they could turn out well because people would be interested in watching my documentary and I think that if it was to be a three minute wonder preview then it would get views. I also think that it's definitely an interesting topic to look into, knowing that it's hard to please everyone as I found that all my responses had different tastes in documentary I thought it would also be a challenge trying to get a lot of new people interested in watching this because it's a different subject matter and some people might find it too sensitive, but I'm hoping that my documentary will be powerful and sensitive so that people will be hit by emotions and really enjoy the three minutes.

I also created a second survey which was to be sent to all of the students in college to find out whether or not students aged 16-18 self harmed or had ever self harmed, to do this survey I wanted it to be productive and the best it could be, and therefore I pieced together nine questions that I thought I could ask the I sent the link to the student welfare coordinator (Lisa Osborne) and (Anita Hartley) the email just asked for help and to make sure that it would be okay to send this questionnaire out to students.

A day later I had a response from Lisa and as you can see in the image that was her response, after reading that I made alterations to my questionnaire to make sure that it was suitable and to what Lisa had requested. After having done that I then sent the email out to all students in the college, I didn't personally do that, I took the link to IT who then sorted it out for me. I then waited and then collected my responses.

Having looked at all of the responses I found that it was a higher percentage of people that hadn't self harmed, though I had the trouble of deciding whether or not this was fair because not only did I have these responses but because I only had the fee use of the website, I had seventy-four responses that I couldn't look at, so I have to rely on the ninety-four that I do have. I found that thirty-nine of the people that took the survey had self harmed, so I went further to look into the rest of the responses to why to see if I could relate any of the reasons to Kayla.


The most shocking thing to look at was the reasons to why these people started to self harm because they all seemed to be similar problems, the main cause was stress. Not only that but anxiety and depression seemed to be other reoccurring words that appeared in the forty-one responses. Linking back to Kayla, I know that she suffers from depression and going to to ask her if school was ever a problem she agreed and said that bullying was something she had to face everyday and still does when she goes in though she is learning to face it. I think that college is similar, in the way that self harming occurs through bullying, as some responses had said. These were all interesting responses to see because they are all something that happened to a lot of these people, and throughing out my opinion I think that if this is something that is happening around college then clearly something could be done about it? But that's a whole different story. Further looking into the responses from my survey,one of the most shocking points was the question where I asked if these people would like any help. and thirty-one people said no, where as three said yes.





This is really shocking to know that so many people wouldn't like any help, and this lead to the question of how long people had self-harmed for to see if it was an ongoing situation or something some people just had an outbreak off around college. The scariest thing is out of the forty-one replies, exactly half of them had been self harming for three to nearly four years, a lot of people also specified 'since year 9' which seemed to be a trigger point for a lot of these people. I have found that this survey was quiet an insight to know that a lot of people around me within the college do actually self harm, though no one wants any help but for everyone to keep it to themselves. I find that these results are really something that I could talk about in my interview with Kayla, or at least talk to her before or after about to see how she feels about what is not only going on in school but is also happening in college, as some of the reasons she can relate too. After having done this survey, I made sure that help was available for everyone by adding some links to the bottom of my survey, of course everything was kept anonymous too.



After having done some more research I also needed to do some market research to find out how popular Documentaries would be and how often they were on TV to the amount of view time they had, well recently we paired up in the class and figured out the amount of view time that documentaries had, we found that there was a lot more view time then we would've thought as a huge 9.52% of TV time over the period of a week on Channel 4 was 15 hours and fifteen minutes. I think that this is a really interesting matter to know that documentaries are a lot more popular than we thought and Looking at some figures on Channel 4 I also found that documentaries were quite popular, and I found that having to shown mine would be interesting as I suspect more people than I thought would be interested in my documentary and watch it.

Going back to Kayla I think that school is a really important factor in her life yet this is also a triggering point, and as found in my survey that the school/college environment really plays a part in self harming. I asked Kayla if school was ever something that made her self harm and even though she agreed (as mentioned earlier) she said it's not her sole reason to self harm at all, though she couldn't explain why school wasn't that important to her she did say that she never self harms to attract attention as some girls in her school do (as she said). I went on to look into schools as a problem and found that it seemed to be something a lot of schools found it a problem but because of a coping mechanism rather than having a psychological or personality disorder. I found this piece of information to explain my results well.

After looking at all of this, I knew that Kayla's reason for her troubles wasn't from school, but having a little information myself to know what kind of things now a days affect teenagers her age was interesting to find out and for that I am glad that I looked into some areas that can 'trigger' some students. That was then further backed up by my results that I found when I did the survey for the college, I really think that my documentary is going to be an interesting one as I would really like to see Kayla's views on this whole topic in more detail, and lets hope it goes well.



Bibliography

Mental Health Statistics: http://www.youngminds.org.uk/training_services/policy/mental_health_statistics
Impact of Child Abuse: http://www.asca.org.au/about/resources/impact-of-child-abuse.aspx
A World Of Pain- Meera Syal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVng5a6Hh60
Childline: http://www.childline.org.uk/Explore/Self-harm/Pages/about-self-harm.aspx
Mind: http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/self-harm/#.UylozPl_t8E
Helping Self Harm Students: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/dec09/vol67/num04/Helping_Self-Harming_Students.aspx