A HAMPSHIRE teenager is using creative arts as a means to help people with mental health problems.

Olivia Dunlop has travelled the world with the student-led Act 4 Change which aims to research the stigma around mental health issues through theatre and film.

Following a string of successful trips to India and Cameroon, the charity is about to launch workshops in Winchester and Oxford working with the Centre for Community Dialogue and Change – a forum theatre company.

The 19-year-old, who lives with her parents, brother and sister, at Shelley Close in Itchen Abbas, near Winchester, co-founded a student Shakespeare company called A Company of Fools and later trained as a member of the National Youth Theatre.

It was while reading theatre studies at Peter Symonds College that Olivia realised how she wanted to utilise her artistic skill.

She said: “Watching people close to you struggling with an invisible, eroding, and isolating illness is an agonising experience for all involved. There is no quick cure, no way to ‘shake it off’.

“The level of understanding is rising, especially among young people, but the scale is underestimated, and there are certain images of what someone who has a mental illness should look or act like.”

Statistics show that at any time one in six people will suffer mental illness.

“Anyone, even if they live in a stable, happy and loving environment, can get a mental illness,” said Olivia.

“It is not something to be ashamed of.”

She added: “I believe that theatre can be an incredible tool for change and discussion.”

The project has become so popular the group are regularly communicating with health workers in Delhi, Goa and Varanasi and aim to create a professional documentary which will be broadcast in India.

It will involve forum theatre – in which members of the public are invited to take part in improvised plays – which will be put together to form the film as part of a longer-term programme currently being forged by health professionals in UK and India.

The ‘kickstarter’ programme was launched in a bid to raise £25,090 which will include costs for workshops, transport, accommodation and production costs.

Find out more at kickstarter.com/projects/ 1846622442/act-for-change-healing-minds.