What is a mentally healthy production?

What do we mean when we talk about mentally healthy productions?

Working in film and TV production can be creative, fast-paced and exciting, but jobs in the industry can also come with pressure, irregular working hours and demanding schedules.   All production companies have a legal duty to protect workers from stress, but often the mental health of teams comes too low down the list of priorities. 

A mentally healthy production is one where people feel listened to, prioritised and supported, receive the training and tools needed to do their job and feel good doing it. Work demands are reasonable, everyone understands their responsibilities and has a degree of control over the way they work. Any big decisions that affect the team are clearly communicated and where possible, there are opportunities to influence these in advance.  

A mentally healthy production also has policies and procedures in place to reduce the risk of  bullying, racism and harassment. It also takes into consideration risks to mental health on that specific project, like working long hours or with sensitive material, rather than just looking after overall wellbeing. If leaders put the right systems in place and set up working conditions to mitigate risk to mental health, then it’s not all on the individual to look after themselves and simply ‘tough it out’. 

Benefits of this approach

A people-centred approach benefits everyone, and the creative results will be better for it. Employees take fewer sick days, report lower levels of stress and burn-out, and productivity goes up. In short, people work best when they are happy, engaged and working together towards a common goal.   

Achieving our aim together 

Mental health and wellbeing should become ingrained in our decision making at every stage of a production. It needs to be everyone’s responsibility. We can all start doing this today, just by adjusting our mindset at work. No matter your level of responsibility we can all consider the impact our decisions will have on others and the wider team. Change can be gradual, and it doesn’t need to be expensive.   

The importance of simply talking about mental health openly and offering a listening ear cannot be underestimated. This short guide, How to talk to your teams about mental health, can be a good place to start. Let’s start changing our industry.