For my unit 3 project, I have decided to focus on men’s mental health and raise more awareness on the stigmas surrounding the issue, such as “men are not allowed to show emotion”, “men should not cry”, etc. To teach more about this, I think that the target audience is between teenagers to young adults, so high school and college male students. The best way to reach this group, in a professional manner, would be through an educational infographic sent by the place of education. By sending out a campus wide email, it ensure that the pertinent information is easily accessible, concise, and available to a large portion of the target demographic.
I am aware that an issue with sending a school wide email is that many students tend to, either ignore their emails or briefly skim them. To counteract the proclivity to glance at the emails, I would make it as brief as possible, yet maintain a good amount of necessary information in easy-to-read sections. And for the students who neglect to read the email at all, the infographic could be printed out in poster format and posted to various doors in different halls. Therefore, I will try and make the infographic as visually pleasing as possible.
The reason I think that this information for this target audience should come from the schools, is to solidify that men have resources to help deal with their mental health issues that are offered at most colleges/ universities/ high schools. At the end of the memo, I would remind the students that there are always people willing to help, and in Syracuse’s case, just a phone call away or right across campus at the Barnes Center.
I personally really like this infographic in reference to my research because I could try to make mine come across as a sort of step by step to getting help and to counteract the stigma behind men’s mental health. I also want to include statistics on my infographic so I am still looking around at different examples. With this particular one, I enjoyed that it is very simple and easy to understand but that also just makes it a little boring, so I want to make mine more engaging.
Hi Caitlin,
I think this subject is super overlooked in society today, and I think your work will be great. We often tend to focus on women’s mental health over men’s, while men have just as many emotions as women. I think your audience is key- our generation needs to be educated, as well as supported. We soon will be joining the real world and will need to know the tools to support not only each other but ourselves. I think a campus-wide email is a great idea, my only advice to you would be to maybe stick with your voice, opposed to the chancellors. I think a campus-wide email written by a student would be super effective, and if anything, students would be more inclined to read it. Sometimes I brush past the emails we get, and If one were written by a student, I would be pretty intrigued. Best of luck to you- I think this will turn out great.
-Kate
Hi Caitlin,
I really like the topic you picked for this project! As Kate said, this issue is very overlooked due our cultural norms. I think including stats will be very useful in showing men how prevalent these issues are and reinforcing that they are not alone. Additionally, through using email, you probably will reach a greater group of men given that they will be able to read it in their own privacy rather than on a public bulletin board. As always, providing resources is another great addition to addressing many societal issues.
I am excited to see the final product!
– Joanna
An excellent point, Joanna–the option to read something privately, to spend as much time with the information as one might want, is important given the social stigma that surrounds the subject matter.
Good work, Caitlin–glad to see you recognize both the value and the potential constraints of the genre. Being mindful of those gives you the best possible chance to develop a text that navigates the complexity.