Best Days Of Your Life Project

Best Days Of Your Life – Adolescent self-harm and mental health issues explored during May in UK photographic exhibition that explores the often taboo topic of discussion

To mark Mental Health Awareness Week in May, London-based photographer, campaigner and mother of 4 teenage daughters, Jude Wacks will be raising awareness of the growth in youth self-harm through a photographic exhibition taking place in London and delivering a public talk on May 13 with her daughter. Best Days Of Your Life explores a group of 18 to 20 year-olds who have all self-harmed throughout their secondary school careers

(London, UK – April 30, 2019) – Since October 2017, Londoner and mother of four teenage daughters, Jude Wacks has been exploring the theme of youth self-harm in a powerful set of photographs, which helps to expose the issue, the children who try to cover up their actions and what the consequences are for both society and the individuals concerned of ignoring this invisible illness.

With Mental Health Awareness Week taking place from May 13 to May 19, Wacks will be exhibiting her work in association with mental health charity Jami, at the Head Room Café in Golders Green, north west London. Wacks along with her daughter will also be leading an open discussion at Head Room Cafe on May 13 on how self-harm has impacted her own family.

“As a parent of a teenage daughter, who has grappled with mental health issues for a number of years, I have experienced first-hand the pain and trauma that self-harm causes to both the sufferer and their families,” Wacks said. “Mental Health Awareness Week provides an opportunity for those who wish to understand more about this. Throughout my personal experience and exposure to adolescent mental health issues during secondary school years, I began to realise how wide spread self-harm has become, but yet still very much a taboo. Through this project I hope to raise awareness of this and give the silent pain a personal voice.”

This is the third time Wacks has exhibited her photography. Her first two public exhibitions of Best Days Of Your Life during summer 2018, allowed for dialogue of the often taboo topic of self-harm amongst our schoolchildren, to be discussed and explored. At both London’s Old Truman Brewery in the East End and LCC in Elephant & Castle, those visiting were moved by the pictures and stories of what are ordinary looking children in their late teens who have been self-harming for many years and relating their own experiences to the subject matter.

The UK has faced an alarming increase in teenage mental health issues with stress, pressure, bullying and social media identified as factors. Across the country and affecting all socio-economic demographics, gender and ethnicities, children are being hospitalised on a worrying daily basis through self-harm.

Wacks has gathered a diverse group of sixth formers and school leavers who have one thing in common: they have self-harmed throughout their secondary school education and plans to add further sixth formers and school leavers to be photographed and have their stories told. “At first glance they seem to be an average looking group of late teens,” Wacks said. “But when you start capturing them on film and talking to them, you can see the pain that lingers within. Sometimes it is obvious, often there are subtle nuances in their appearance and outlook that provide an indication as to how they feel". "We can never be sure at first glance how far down the path they’ve gone to self-harming,” Wacks added. “It’s only by talking and listening that we can try to figure out what issues these teens may face”.

Through Best Days Of Your Life, Wacks aims to question the wider mental health balance of exposure and awareness. “I’m trying to examine the intimate choice of hiding or revealing the invisible pain these teenagers have,” Wacks said.

Throughout this project, Wacks also questions the observers’ choice of visual clarity when ‘seeing’ our children and their scarred generation. "Whether it is our own children or other people’s, how do we perceive, relate to, confront and address this issue?” she added. Wacks also strives to challenge the taboo and stigma of self-harm to both sufferer and their families. Best Days Of Your Life is a strong social documentary of a very real and current situation affecting our youth and schools today.