Why mental wellbeing is the key to creativity
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and here Becky Morrison, producer and founder of The Light, asks the advertising industry – what if the way we work is both hurting people and diminishing the quality of the work itself?
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I once worked on a production where, soon after camera wrap, a production assistant had a seizure. He fell, hit his head on the curb, and lay unconscious on the sidewalk.
We praise the grind and discourage dissent… We’re taught that our feelings don’t matter, that the production comes first.
While we waited for the ambulance, the crew stepped around him, loading gear onto trucks. They didn’t miss a beat. Not because they didn’t care, but because we’ve been conditioned to keep moving, to prioritise production over people.
This isn’t an isolated anecdote. It reflects a broader culture where emotional suppression is seen as professionalism. We praise the grind and discourage dissent. We’re taught that our feelings don’t matter, that the production comes first, and that anyone who breaks doesn’t deserve to be there in the first place. Over time, this way of working has become so ingrained that we’ve stopped questioning it entirely.
In the United States alone, mental health issues cost the economy an estimated US$282 billion each year.
But what if the way we work is not only harming the people who make the work, but also diminishing the quality of the work itself?
Mental health is not a luxury. It is a foundational condition for creativity. The best work doesn’t happen in spite of mental wellbeing. It happens because of it.
The cost of ignoring mental well-being is measurable. In the United States alone, mental health issues cost the economy an estimated $282 billion each year. Within the film/TV industry, the toll is just as clear.
We can trace advertising’s grind culture back to the structures we’ve inherited.
According to the 2024 UK Looking Glass Report, 63 per cent of industry professionals say their work negatively impacts their mental health, and 64 per cent have considered leaving the business altogether. These aren’t people who lack grit, they are creative souls drawn to the magic of storytelling, now quietly pushed out by systems that treat their humanity like a liability.
Production is still organised like an assembly line: stay quiet, move fast, replace the broken part.
We can trace advertising’s grind culture back to the structures we’ve inherited. Our production model was designed for the Golden Age of Hollywood, built to prioritise efficiency and control. Production is still organised like an assembly line: stay quiet, move fast, replace the broken part. However, creative work is not mechanical; it is emotional, relational, and fundamentally human.
Prolonged exposure to [stress hormone] cortisol can impair cognition, limit creative insight, and reduce our capacity to process new information.
Neuroscience confirms what many of us have felt intuitively for years. People do not do their best work in survival mode. Under chronic stress, the brain redirects energy away from the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for problem-solving, innovation, and memory.
According to the American Psychological Association, prolonged exposure to cortisol can impair cognition, limit creative insight, and reduce our capacity to process new information.
In other words, the pressure we’ve normalised in production doesn’t sharpen creativity. It dulls it.
Instead of hoping for cinematic magic to strike, we can design for it.
Many of us know that feeling of transcendence on set when something just clicks. The work begins to move through you, and you are no longer just doing your job. You are part of a current, carried by a creative force greater than yourself. These moments are so powerful that we endure the challenges of this career just for the chance to experience them again.
These experiences are seen as rare, but they do not have to be. They can be created again and again through thoughtful leadership, emotional awareness, and a shared commitment to how we treat one another on set.
A healthy set is not a mystery. It is a place where clear, respectful communication happens early and often.
Much of the best work in our industry is already happening under these kinds of conditions, we just fail to recognise that an emotionally healthy environment is what makes excellence possible. We chalk it up to luck or chemistry, but instead of hoping for cinematic magic to strike, we can design for it. Whether a creative vision is fulfilled does not need to be left to chance. It can happen every time.
A healthy set is not a mystery. It is a place where clear, respectful communication happens early and often: where people know and use each other’s names; where departments collaborate rather than compete; where leaders understand they are responsible not only for the schedule but for the emotional tone of the day. It is a place where crew members feel like they are part of something meaningful, not just a line number in a budget or a name on a callsheet.
If we know that care fuels creativity, why keep clinging to systems that drain it.
These kinds of environments are not luxuries. They are structural elements that make high-quality work possible. The more we recognise them, the more consistently we can create them.
The fact is: People making the work deserve to feel good while making it. That is not idealism. It is a blueprint for award-winning work. If we know that care fuels creativity, why keep clinging to systems that drain it? We already know what great work requires. It's just up to us to choose it.
