Definitions of mental health and mental illness
Losing It takes as its starting point the idea of viewing mental health as a continuum, ranging from stress and anxiety, through simple and clinical depression, eating and obsessive-compulsive disorders to self-harm/suicide, schizophrenia and trauma. Mental health problems can affect anyone, but it’s important to recognise that some people are more vulnerable than others.

Identifying the signs of a mental health problem
The central character Jude is concealing his anxiety, distress, loneliness and feelings of worthlessness. Because he is widely regarded as capable and confident, an achiever - someone who gets on with his life - family and friends don’t see anything worrying in his behaviour. This is partly because they don’t expect it and partly because Jude tries to conceal what is happening to him. The situation is complicated because Jude doesn’t actually know what is happening to him.

What are some of the symptoms of a mental health problem?
Although Jude’s condition is never labelled, he is depressed. In the drama, he experiences some of the more common symptoms of depression: sleeplessness, restlessness, feelings of worthlessness, sudden mood changes, difficulty in concentrating. He is also spending quite a bit of time alone in his room. On the other hand, he drives himself hard – running, forcing himself to socialise and taking risks that lead to a kind of self-harm: getting himself beaten up.

Gender and mental health
Jude doesn’t talk to anyone about his feelings. Being unable to cope is both terrifying and shameful to him. Like many young men, he doesn’t have the language or confidence to articulate his feelings. This is not to say that young women don’t conceal things, too, but Jude’s friendships (until Tom) appear to function on the public and social rather than the private and intimate level. There is no obvious support structure among the young men he goes around with.

Tom provides a different perspective – he is more emotionally expressive. However, he is socially very shy and, at the point we meet him, preoccupied with a girl. Perhaps he could help Jude, but through a mix of circumstances, both let opportunities for confidences go by.

The causes of the mental health problem
There is no sense in the drama of exactly what has 'caused' Jude’s depression. The focus is deliberately on the experience of it rather than the factors that might have contributed to it. But in Jude’s life there are signs of intense loneliness and a lack of intimacy, of feelings of low self-worth, of exam pressures and of fear of the future.

Losing It avoids signalling strong personal and social 'causes' such as a dysfunctional family, bereavement or social disadvantage, so that there is no neat equation of cause and effect. Tom's introduction of the idea of genetic predisposition is designed to stimulate wider investigation of biomedical factors such as brain dysfunction, biochemical imbalance and heredity.

Risk-taking behaviour, self-harm and attempted suicide
Rates in self-harm and attempted suicide are rising, especially in young men aged 15–24 where they have doubled over the past two decades. Self-harm is a major cry for help and a person who self-harms is far more likely to commit suicide than someone who does not.

When we think of self-harm, we tend to think of young people (especially girls) cutting themselves. Jude’s actions suggest a different way of looking at self-harm. He goes out drinking and provokes a beating. To what extent is this just 'ordinary' behaviour? To what extent should we regard it as a form of self-harm?

Getting help
The drama goes no further than showing Jude starting on a process – hopefully towards recovery. The key is the ability to talk about the problem, and Losing It makes it clear that this is difficult for a variety of reasons. But in the end, Jude takes two of the most important steps: acknowledging the problem and asking for help.