Our idea is to give visibility to what OCD really is, in order to avoid the shame that comes with mislabelling and misunderstanding the condition. Indeed, OCD is known by the mainstream as a personality trait, describing a person who is overly organised and fussy about cleanliness, rather than a debilitating mental health condition that can severely affect the sufferer’s daily life and wellbeing. The charity Mind describes it as: ‘Lots of people have misconceptions about what OCD is. Some people think it just means you wash your hands a lot or that you like things to be tidy. They might even make jokes about it or describe themselves as a ‘little bit OCD’. This can be frustrating and upsetting, especially if someone who feels this way is a friend, colleague, family member or a health care professional.’ Debunking those misconceptions is therefore contributing to a more caring, knowledgable and understanding society.
The project idea was to create a video that would showcase interviews of people suffering with OCD, next to interviews of people who do not necessarily know much about it, in order to show how the common understanding of OCD is false, without condemning the people that believe it. The chosen medium was puppet stop-motion animation, to combine the diverse personal skills in our team (MA architecture student Su Demir, MA Product Design and former fashion student, Fengxu Chen, MA Service Design and former Motion Design student, Sunny Duangvichai and MA Animation student, Blanche Malet Le Lay Salvi), as well as to provide full anonymity to participants, as they discussed a sensitive matter.
Special thanks to Orchard OCD, charity who provided us with participants and communicated about our project on their instagram page.
