Healthcare provider LifeStance Health has teamed up with Leica Camera on a campaign that uses photography and poetry to reduce stigmas around mental health. 

The Not One Face campaign, which started in 2021, launched its latest iteration this week with a video titled There is Not One Face to Mental Health. 

It features a slideshow of black-and-white and color photographs backed by music and a poetry reading by Hussain Manawer, a celebrated British author who has written about his mental health struggles.

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The launch coincides with Mental Health Awareness Month and comes amidst concerns about a mental health crisisamong children and young adults. 

“We really wanted to challenge certain assumptions and make it clear that mental health does not always look the same,” said Ashley Anderson, LifeStance SVP of marketing.

For the project, 13 photographers used Leica equipment to “depict how anxiety manifests in the real world through their creative lenses,” an introduction to the slideshow states.

Anderson said the brand’s creatives had talked with its agency of record, The Unquantifiable, about collaborating with another company for the campaign. They landed on the idea of working with a camera brand and reached out to Leica.

The collection features a wide array of subjects, including school children lined up on a sidewalk; a carnival featuring a “chaos” sign; a man in distress letting the ocean wash over him; and a broken, old television in the middle of a field. 

Manawer also recites the poem, “The Deep End,” which he wrote for the campaign. It opens with shots of children and the lines: 

“There’s the innocence in my youth

Where I swim, walk, stand strong

In hope my shadow never leaves me

When I’m in my darkest room

Don’t tell me this is how my future tastes

I don’t want to be your future face

Depression, how dare you attempt to attach yourself to my roots.”

Manawer “was a very natural fit to the campaign because of his own personal struggles and narrative with mental health,” Anderson said.

LifeStance, Leica and the photographers will share content on their social media feeds including links to the campaign landing page.