Co-designing for mental health: creative methods to engage young people experiencing psychosis

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the development and use of creative methods to engage young people experiencing psychosis in co-creation of an online resource to support their education and wellbeing. Engaging young people in a meaningful way, let alone those experiencing psychosis, can be challenging using traditional research methods. Throughout a series of discovery, and prototyping and evaluation workshops, we successfully engaged young people, their families/carers and clinicians in hospital and community mental health settings in enjoyable and empowering co-design activities. These co-design sessions were largely inspired by young people's extensive use of social media metaphors and were adaptable to their interests, preferences and mood. We used storytelling through emojis, a relatable persona with emotion mapping, a card sorting activity and an icebreaker that involved the group co-designing a pizza for our lunch. In the prototyping and evaluation workshops, emotion abstract sketching was used to guide the look-and-feel of the future resource. Using creative methods can enable more than just active engagement of young people with complex health issues. Engagement through creative activities can help draw out the unique experiences and perspectives of potentially vulnerable young people so that solutions that most effectively meet their needs can be explored and developed.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-design
• creative methods
• youth engagement
• user experience
• online resources
• psychosis

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the staff at the Auckland DHB's Child and Family Unit (CFU) and Community Mental Health Services’ Taylor and St Lukes Centres for their assistance with the co-design workshops. We would also like to thank Dr Ian Soosay, consultant psychiatrist in Early Psychosis Intervention, Department of Psychological Medicine, Auckland City Hospital; Nathan Leaming, service user advocacy representative, Affinity Services; Dr Trudy Aspden, School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, the University of Auckland; and all the participants for their invaluable contribution to this project.

Disclosure statement

Amy Chan has received consultancy fees from Janssen-Cilag, and speaker fees from Novartis, for activities outside this submitted work. She is also a freelance research consultant for Spoonful of Sugar Ltd, a UCL-spin out company specializing in behaviour change. All other authors report no potential conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Auckland District Health Board Charitable Trust [grant number A+ 7090].

Notes on contributors

Ivana Nakarada-Kordic

Ivana Nakarada-Kordic is a qualitative researcher with a background in human factors and health psychology. Her work at the DHW Lab focuses on user experiences in the healthcare context and how these could be improved through design. As part of the Lab's multidisciplinary team, she is currently involved in various co-design projects involving patients, designers, researchers and clinicians in both hospital and community settings.

Nick Hayes

Nick Hayes is a user experience (UX) designer. His work at the DHW Lab focuses on co-designing digital product experiences for people with mental health conditions, including mild cognitive impairment and psychosis.

Stephen D. Reay

Steve Reay is co-director of the Design for Health and Wellbeing (DHW) Lab, a collaboration between the Auckland District Health Board and AUT University, initiated to develop an intentional relationship between design process and the area of health and wellbeing, and underpinned by interdisciplinary collaboration and a strong focus on user-centered design.

Carla Corbet

Carla Corbet is an advanced clinical pharmacist in mental health at Auckland City Hospital. She is part of the multidisciplinary team at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit (CFU) in Starship Children's Hospital. She provides a clinical pharmacy service to CFU which involves liaising with other health professionals, patients and their families to contribute to the safe and effective use of medicines.

Amy Chan

Amy Chan is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre of Behavioural Medicine, University College London. Her research interests focus on optimizing medicines-related behaviour through understanding and exploring the factors that influence human behaviour. Prior to this, whilst this project was conducted, Amy was the clinical pharmacist team leader in mental health at Auckland City Hospital.