Without a journey there’s no return
It’s the inevitable way of growing up
Lyrics from “Listen” by Tiago Bettencourt and Cool Hipnoise
Encontrar+SE, a grassroots mental health advocacy group started by Filipa Pahla in Portugal, recently found an imaginative way to fight stigma. A few years ago, Filipa persuaded twenty of her nation’s most popular singers and song writers to participate in a ten-month long, anti-stigma campaign. 
A different artist performed an original song each month about mental illness. The song writers were asked to compose lyrics that first described a problem and then offered a solution. The songs were broadcast on the radio and in music videos on television.
The first three songs introduced listeners to mental illnesses. The themes were : Discriminating/Integrating, Denying/Accepting, and Separating/Uniting.
