The beauty of YouTube and other online channels is it’s very easy to get your movie or short film out into the world. With today’s technology it’s also a lot cheaper to make a short film, and now a group of high school students has made The Imbalancing Act, a twenty-minute movie that will hopefully raise awareness of depression in teens.
As Good Housekeeping reports, one of the goals of The Imbalancing Act is to take away the stigma of mental health for teens who can often get overwhelmed by what they’re feeling. One of the students who worked on the film, Madison De La Garza, said, “I’m passionate about mental health. In our school, I noticed there was quite a bit of misunderstanding about what it is and how it affects people. I thought someone has to start the conversation, and who better than us?”
De La Garza had experiences with depression herself and added, “I wanted to make people realize that this is not something you can just get over.” And another teen who worked on the film added, At the time, up to 20% of our student population was suffering from mental illness. There shouldn’t be a stigma attached to a diagnosis.”
And indeed, once the film premiered in L.A., it was uploaded on YouTube the next day. The students then heard from teens all over the world. “We had comments from teens in Brazil who don’t speak English, but who understand the film. One girl wrote to us on social media that she completely related to the main character, and she checked herself into treatment and got the help she needed.”