STORY BY VANESSA GILLIS
Can awareness save lives? Daniel D’Or hopes his new show can.
Teens 101 is a 13-part TV series aimed at helping young adults deal with the stresses of adolescence, ranging from bullying, depression, and anxiety to addiction and body image.
“I’m really excited about doing this. It’s a passion project, it really is,” said Daniel D’Or, senior executive producer at Canamedia and creator of the show’s concept. “No one really knows what the outcome will be, but I can comfortably say that we can probably save lives.”
According to Statistics Canada, suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people under 24.
“There’s a million reasons why they do it, but it all comes down to ‘I can’t handle this anymore,’” said D’Or.
“Kids kill themselves in this country every year,
so you tell me that this project isn’t important.”
D’Or came up with the concept to reach out to young adults who are experiencing these issues and to make others aware of them as well.
“Think of all of these things that we don’t want to think about but that many kids go through,” he said. “This is to put that on the surface.”
Each episode will deal with a different issue and will begin from the perspective of someone who has been through the crisis. That issue will then be dramatically recreated so the viewer goes through that moment in their life. Finally, mental health professionals will offer advice and their thoughts on the issue.
“I’ve researched this quite a bit and I’ve realized there’s nothing quite like this out there to really connect,” said D’Or. “If you’re in that category, you keep to yourself and you feel isolated. I want to get it out there that this happens.”
Susan Raphael, an mental health and addiction counsellor working with the show, said the show is meant to raise awareness about youth mental health and addiction issues and some of the dissolutions that are out there.
“There’s a lot out there on addiction and mental health that’s more of a reality show and sometimes bordering on exploitive,” said Raphael. “What interested me about this idea is that it’s meant to be educational. I like that it’s not exploitive.”
So far, D’Or said they have some local organizations that have come on board, including Raphael, the Canadian Mental Health Association, and the Reach Out Centre for Kids, or ROCK.
Accompanying the show, D’Or said they are also working on a lesson plan that will be incorporated into classroom curriculums to help teachers introduce these topics because “teachers generally don’t have that type of education of mental health in their teaching course.”
They will also be creating a website based on the show that will show adolescents how and where to connect, and offer a blog for those who want to seek further help.
This will be accompanied by a mobile application that will help with self-esteem by offering an inspirational phrase or pep talk every morning.
“Basically, we’re going to build a program to help kids get help,” said D’Or.
“I absolutely know in my heart that this project will help so many kids.”
Teens 101 will be broadcast nationally on ichannel and is scheduled to go on air next September.
D’Or urges anyone interested in participating with the show to contact him at dan.dor@canamedia.com