The door to the conversation around mental health has opened wider in recent years, allowing people to find comfort in their vulnerability. Brian Higgins, founder of Mental Healthy F.i.T. (Films-ideas-Tips) has a unique approach to the subject.
“Mental Healthy F.i.T. arose out of my own recovery and my own journey through homelessness,” Higgins says. While navigating early life in Northern Ireland, Higgins was faced with traumatic events that led him to addiction and PTSD, among other elements that are often a result of trauma. He ended up homeless while trying to find help through therapy, treatment centers and other resources but found that nothing resonated with him. “In all my Celtic wisdom, I just drank more to make it go away,” he says. “And of course, that didn’t make it go away; it just made everything else in my life go away.” Higgins was able to transition out of this state through creativity. “It was how I was able to reconstruct my triggers through creative form. I was able to reconstruct my negative reaction to guns — my main form of PTSD,” he says. He used his imagination to change the situation, to turn a gun into a banana. And that’s where Mental Healthy F.i.T. began.
Mental Healthy F.i.T has helped many people find comfort and be be more vulnerable. Photo: John Taylor
“It was how I was able to reconstruct my triggers through creative form.”
The nonprofit organization, started in 2016, has since become a traveling film festival focusing on all aspects of mental health. Through their Focus On Fests events, the organization travels to locations where they are needed (for example: a school that wants to host an assembly on bullying). The idea is to generate emotional filmmaking to create visceral responses that enhance conversations around mental health. Higgins shares one example of a film with a monster under the bed; the monster can represent addiction, PTSD, depression, etc. “It is real and if it comes out from under the bed, it will kill us. We have to do everything in our power to ask for help, and it’s all fair and good — us having the vulnerability to ask for help. But the community as a whole has to know how to answer that,” he says.
Mental Healthy F.i.T. has found film to be a good medium for people to talk about their experiences. Whether the film itself is correlated to someone’s personal experience or not, as two people with the exact same diagnosis can have entirely different stories, it allows them to relate to the emotion, which then opens up the space for conversation about their personal trauma and mental health.
“Really, the through line was always to find ways to make things better.”
Not only do the people watching the films benefit from this, but those who are a part of making the films benefit, too. Higgins explains the process of giving each person a new job each day and how there’s a job for everyone to do. He shares the analogy that someone could be a director for a day and ask for something as simple as a chair to be moved, and it gets moved. “That could be the first time that anybody has ever responded to you in a positive way and has given you the self esteem to realize, ‘I asked for what I wanted and it happened. Maybe I could ask for boundaries, too,’” he says. Local filmmakers often give back by providing mentorship.
“Finding ways to make things better to help people” is the motto behind Mental Healthy F.i.T., and one that Higgins strongly relates to. “I look back at all my professional and personal endeavors, whether it was graphic design, architecture or making false teeth. Really, the through line was always to find ways to make things better,” he says.
Mental Healthy F.i.T. also travels to Utah’s neighboring states. They host workshops and other events, like Focus on Fridays, which are held online on the first Friday of every month. They are hosting a three-day Focus on FestsFestivalin May 2025. Follow Mental Healthy F.i.T. on Instagram at @mentalhealthyfitfor more information.
