Materialising Mental Health Design approaches for creative engagement with intangible experience

Luria, Michal, Mills, Ulu, Brown, Jennifer, Herzog, Katie, Rodriguez, Laura, Vitoorakaporn, Supawat, LeFevre, Josh, Guilfoile, Carlie, Kahle, Nowell, Dong, Kailin, Nip, Jessica, Dev, Aisha, Glass, Katie, Jin, Zhiye, Kwon, Soonho, Wolf, Arden and Lockton, Dan (2021) Materialising Mental Health Design approaches for creative engagement with intangible experience. In: Creative Approaches to Health Education. Routledge, London, UK. ISBN 9781003126508

Abstract

Can creative methods drawn from design research practice be leveraged to help people think about, express and discuss their own mental health? Tackling communication hurdles around mental health is a societal challenge which creative methods of inquiry are well placed to address. Where verbal expression alone fails, the affordances of multisensory tools and artefacts have the potential to provide a language for expression, discussion and peer support, and to create collective pictures of a community’s mental health. In this chapter, we introduce a multifaceted exploration of how mental health issues can be materialised in individual and group contexts. Personalised Potions, Empathy Rock Garden, Emotional Modelling and Lexicon of Feelings are four ‘making’ activities developed and facilitated by students at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, USA. Each activity takes a unique approach to materialising emotions, using different material qualities and facilitation techniques. These approaches enable varying levels of anonymity, synchronicity and collaboration, but are united in their ability to create a safe space for externalisation of complex internal emotions. Our approach is centred on exploring participants’ making activities and the artefacts emerging. While acts of making may have therapeutic properties, our main interest is in observing the patterns, themes, metaphors and material mappings which are produced.

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