Friday, 26 September 2014
Wednesday, 24 September 2014
STORY BY
VANESSA GILLIS
Can awareness save lives? Daniel
D’Or hopes his new show can.
Teens 101 is a 13-part TV series
aimed at helping young adults deal with the stresses of adolescence, ranging
from bullying, depression, and anxiety to addiction and body image.
“I’m really excited about doing
this. It’s a passion project, it really is,” said Daniel
D’Or, senior executive producer at Canamedia
and creator of the show’s concept. “No one really knows what the outcome will
be, but I can comfortably say that we can probably save lives.”
According to Statistics Canada, suicide is the
second-leading cause of death for people under 24.
“There’s a million reasons why
they do it, but it all comes down to ‘I can’t handle this anymore,’” said D’Or.
“Kids kill themselves in this country every year,
so you tell me that this
project isn’t important.”
D’Or came up with the concept to
reach out to young adults who are experiencing these issues and to make others
aware of them as well.
“Think of all of these things that
we don’t want to think about but that many kids go through,” he said. “This is
to put that on the surface.”
Each episode will deal with a
different issue and will begin from the perspective of someone who has been
through the crisis. That issue will then be dramatically recreated so the
viewer goes through that moment in their life. Finally, mental health
professionals will offer advice and their thoughts on the issue.
“I’ve researched this quite a bit
and I’ve realized there’s nothing quite like this out there to really connect,”
said D’Or. “If you’re in that category, you keep to yourself and you feel
isolated. I want to get it out there that this happens.”
Susan Raphael,
an mental health and addiction counsellor working with the show, said the
show is meant to raise awareness about youth mental health and addiction issues
and some of the dissolutions that are out there.
“There’s a lot out there on
addiction and mental health that’s more of a reality show and sometimes
bordering on exploitive,” said Raphael. “What interested me about this idea is
that it’s meant to be educational. I like that it’s not exploitive.”
So far, D’Or said they have some
local organizations that have come on board, including Raphael, the Canadian Mental
Health Association, and the Reach Out Centre for Kids, or ROCK.
Accompanying the show, D’Or said
they are also working on a lesson plan that will be incorporated into classroom
curriculums to help teachers introduce these topics because “teachers generally
don’t have that type of education of mental health in their teaching course.”
They will also be creating a
website based on the show that will show adolescents how and where to connect,
and offer a blog for those who want to seek further help.
This will be accompanied by a
mobile application that will help with self-esteem by offering an inspirational
phrase or pep talk every morning.
“Basically, we’re going to build a
program to help kids get help,” said D’Or.
“I absolutely know in my heart that this project will help so many kids.”
Teens 101 will be broadcast
nationally on ichannel
and is scheduled to go on air next September.
D’Or urges anyone interested in
participating with the show to contact him at dan.dor@canamedia.com
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