We are ending this Mental Health month by continuing.
The Great Journey is a new and growing community and we not only have the opportunity to help studios thrive, but we also have the opportunity to help new and young studios to start more sustainable.
Mental ill-health is growing, Ukie revealed that anxiety and depression rates in games are higher than that of the general population. Anxiety sufferers make up 25% of the industry, whilst those with depression are close behind at 21%.
Adding to this, existing research suggests that rates of mental ill-health are higher among LGBTQ+ people. With LGBTQ+ accounting for 21% of the industry workforce, cases of ill mental health are potentially abundant.
- Source: UK Games Industry Census. Understanding diversity in the UK games industry workforce. Ukie.
Even if these numbers are for the UK, the Swedish games industry also suffers from this. We in The Great Journey want to build a more sustainable games industry and see our partnership with Safe In Our World and their #levelupmentalhealth initiative as a great way to keep ourselves accountable and offer our studios the best conditions to create healthy and sustainable studios.
Being part of this initiative we commit to:
Over the next 12 months, commit to taking the first steps to roll out a mental health support system within your company.
Join Safe In Our World as a partner and commit to supporting Mental Health within the industry.
Help us ensure our teams and players know where support can be found, through sharing messaging and signposting to support.
We might be at the beginning of our journey and want to lead by example so we have downloaded the toolkit and will work with it this summer (both internally and for our studios) and offering our Community Manager and Communications Manager the opportunity to strengthen their knowledge about mental health for the community through the Community Management Mental Health training programme during work hours (still waiting for confirmation about the application).
You can read more about the #levelupmetalhealth initiative here:
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