Animated close-up of a young boy with glasses and his eyes closed, breathing slowly in and out

Mental health series for youth

9 animations on mindfulness and mental health for teens

Overview

For many young people, a YouTube video is more accessible than a therapist. SickKids needed animations that could meet teens where they are, explain abstract mental health concepts in a relatable way, and give them practical tools they could actually use.

We created a series of 9 animations for the SickKids AboutKidsHealth YouTube channel and Teens Mental Health Learning Hub. The series has accumulated over 1.5M views, with "You Are Not Your Thoughts" reaching 1.3M viewers on its own.

We worked within SickKids' established character design system and adapted licensed stock illustrations to maintain a consistent visual style across the series.

We also produced the following videos in the series:

Approach

Health literacy

Each video explains one concept at a time and pairs animation with narration and on-screen text to reduce cognitive load.

Complex emotional concepts are made concrete through visual metaphor. For example, suppressing feelings becomes holding a beach ball underwater, thoughts become waves passing through the mind, and feelings in the body are represented as coloured orbs to help viewers identify and externalize them.

Visual metaphors allow teens to engage with anxiety or grief without feeling overwhelmed. We deliberatively avoided clinical language and diagnostic framing throughout so teens can recognize their own experience without pathologizing it.

Animated GIF of a boy with a stoma sinking into a swirling pool of self-critical thoughts in his bedroom, representing overwhelming emotions
Animated GIF of a nonbinary teenager standing with colourful emotion blobs visible inside their body, representing mixed feelings

Trauma-informed

Each video portrays a realistic teen scenario with warmth and without shame: social anxiety around making new friends, grief from losing a pet, lying awake worrying about math, and uncertainty about what comes after graduation. We chose a gentle, slower pace as well as warm, calming background music to maintain a sense of safety.

Animated GIF of a teenage girl sitting stressed at her desk writing a college application essay, then encouraging herself with a positive self-talk thought bubble
Animated GIF of a nonbinary teenager sitting on their bed looking at their phone and crying while imagining their dog in a thought bubble, representing grief

Cultural responsiveness

We designed for diversity, including characters of different ethnicities, body types, and abilities, including a character who uses a wheelchair, a character with a stoma, and non-binary characters.

Animated GIF of a teenage girl in a nightmare where classmates mock her failed grade, then transforming the scene into herself as a superhero, representing coping with academic anxiety
Animated GIF of a child in a wheelchair rolling into a room where two adult silhouettes are arguing, representing family conflict

Interested in our approach?
See our design principles and how we partner to design patient education resources.

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