Heavy Metal Therapy: Fans in Yorkshire can help their mental health

Heavy Metal Fans with mental health issues have been involved and attending heavy metal therapy groups in Yorkshire.

Transcript

00:00We all know how music can be a great form of therapy, but now what's really

00:06popular in Yorkshire is heavy metal therapy. It's spreading across West

00:12Yorkshire, people from near and far are getting involved with this new

00:18revolution of therapy for heavy metal fans.

00:22We started off by having a collection of recovery stories on Facebook, so that was just people's experience of how they'd

00:29found metal music and the music seemed to be helpful, and I think initially we

00:34wanted like a hundred people to like this Facebook page, that was like our

00:37first aim, and people started contacting me from all over the world saying that

00:41they wanted to submit stories. We eventually got into a website where

00:46we've got loads of recovery stories and then started creating resources and

00:50stuff from there. And what does the session involve when it comes to heavy

00:55metal therapy? So the peer support sessions are kind of open like chat

01:01spaces that people can come and talk about anything to do with heavy metal

01:05and mental health really. For some people that might be like sharing playlists or

01:10talking about music, for other people it's just more of a sort of open chat. So it is

01:15facilitated, so we've got trained facilitators that come and kind of lead

01:19the session. Sometimes we might structure it around something like, I don't know

01:24for example, building battle jackets and things like, you know, what patches you've

01:28got for your favourite band. And other times it's a more kind of free space.

01:32Normally there's an option to play some music as well, so we often talk about

01:36things to do with like music and mental health.