Visualizing mental health: co-design for innovative mental health promotion prototypes through interdisciplinary collaboration between psychology professionals, communication design students and tertiary design educators

Abstract

Approaches to improving people’s mental health fall across a spectrum from those targeting risk and protective factors in healthy individuals to those targeting individuals with mental illness. Common to all approaches is a focus on mental health literacy, improving people’s knowledge about mental health and how it is fostered. Communication designers are not typically involved early in the development of mental health literacy campaigns or products, reflecting a prioritization of the mental health content. This article reports on the benefits of an interdisciplinary collaboration between mental health clinicians, undergraduate communication design students and tertiary design educators, called Visualizing Mental Health, which takes a different approach. Mental health concepts are used to inspire designers to create unique prototypes including games, apps, toys, and books. The development of these prototypes emerges from design thinking and creative idea generation methods. A key to the development of these outcomes is a focus on deliberately open-ended briefing, through which the creative skills of participating communication designers are expressed prior to finalization of client parameters. This approach in a mental health intervention context over a six-year period has attracted attention from mental health sector funding and led to the development of pilotable interventions into mental health literacy.

Keywords:

• Design for health
• mental health literacy
• design ambiguity
• prototypes
• interdisciplinary

Acknowledgements

We’d like to thank the following psychologists who have volunteered their time in the project: Richard Oborn, Sarah Burton, Rachel Reilly, Dr Jodie Harris, Dr Heather Mattner, Dr Alison Robb, Simeon Jones, Carly Sutherland and Karen Davies.

We’d like to thank the following design educators who have taught different student cohorts: Lynda Kay, Emily Renner, Jacqui Sprott, Lucas Shaw, Marchelle Matthew, Chris Thornton, Dr Melinda Gaughwin, Rita Siow and Daniel Purvis.

The following organizations have supported the VMH project in various ways: Cre8d Design, The Australian Psychological Society, Psychology and Health Forum, Institute of Private Practising Psychologists, Australian Graphic Design Association, The Hawke Centre and SA Health.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Doreen Donovan

Doreen Donovan is a communication designer, researcher and design educator based in South Australia. She is passionate about creative research and practice, particularly in the contexts of environmental and social sustainability.

Gareth Furber

Gareth Furber is a psychologist working at Flinders University. He writes, teaches, and delivers programs on the topics of mental health, wellbeing, productivity and behaviour change.

Alexander Cothren

Alex Cothren is a creative writer and adjunct at Flinders University. His writing can be found at alexcothren.com

Jane Andrew

Jane Andrew is an educator and researcher working at the University of South Australia. She is a Senior Lecturer and founding Director of Match Studio an inspiring studio-based model for cross and inter-disciplinary research, teaching and industry linked project based learning (PBL).

Ian Gwilt

Ian Gwilt is Professor of Design at the University of South Australia. He is interested in design for communication and knowledge mobilization in the healthcare environment.