Da Silly Heads: 'Being able to be honest about our feelings is so liberating'

Ciara McDonnell talks to Da Silly Heads' Daniel O'Mahony about breaking down the stigma around mental health

Daniel O'Mahony co-founded Da Silly Heads to reduce stigma around mental health.

I'm the co-founder of Da Silly Heads along with Michal Sikora, which we launched just before the arrival of Covid-1. I'm also a father - I'm married and have two kids. Da Silly Heads came about as a way of telling a very personal story of my struggles with mental health and mental health wins. I think that people forget about the wins along the way.

Michal and I created a set of cartoon characters - the idea was to externalise the feelings we were having in order to take the labels and stereotypes that can be placed on various mental health conditions. The cartoons depicted these feelings in real-life situations that we had experienced, and we put one a week out on social media. The response was immediate. We found that people were relating to our characters and also to the situations that they found themselves in.