Joe Goodall is a 14 year old singer / songwriter who hopes his song ‘Mental’ will help people feel more aware of how having a mental health problem can feel.
I’m Joe Goodall and I’m a 14 year old singer song writer. I’ve been playing music and writing songs since I was 4 years old. When I was about 6 I started suffering from severe anxiety and I struggled a lot with many irrational fears that scared me but also ended up having a big effect on my family as well in many different ways. I would wash my hands for a fear of germs up to 10 times an hour. For a young boy many will agree that this was slightly odd. As I got older my fears changed and turned slightly more irregular. This was when I started writing songs with more meaning and then inevitably also about girls.
I decided to write the song mental when my school who are partnered with SAMH decided to do a mental health awareness week. My views on what they did were that they did a great job of “raising awareness” of it but I felt something was missing. It’s hard for some people who haven’t suffered badly to understand how horrible it can feel to have any of the many mental health problems. The trapped feeling that no-one else understands how it feels. So I decided to write a song and try and fill in the gaps on what was missing in the mental health week. This song means a lot to me and I think that it has a big effect on my friends and family and general public that have heard it. I didn’t make the song really down and gloomy but I tried to add how it can feel but then the things that can take your mind off whatever is worrying you or making you down. I would love the song to be something that anyone could listen to and enjoy, but I would also really like it to be a song that anyone in a sticky situation in their head could resort to and relate to. Hopefully letting them give a sigh of relief and making them feel happier than they before they listened to it.
I have to say that the song and its lyrics are probably aimed at an age group of teenagers, students and really anyone at school but anyone can listen to the song and relate to it because anyone at any age can suffer from mental health problems.
The last thing I sing about in the song is the misconception of the word mental and how it’s used so wrongly all the time. The word mental should be used carefully and certainly not as an insult.
If you ever hear my song I hope you like it and makes you feel slightly more aware of how having a mental health problem can feel.
