This website was created to feature the unique and interesting ideas that UniSA Communication Design students produce when given mental health topics to digest. They can be browsed from the home page. But more broadly, this site is intended to spark people’s imagination on how we can improve mental health literacy through novel product, service, campaign and event development. If you’ve not come across the term ‘mental health literacy’ before: Mental health literacy is defined as “knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid their recognition, management and prevention”¹. It include ..read more

It’s nice to be back and writing on the site again! Visualising Mental Health (VMH) whilst a passion project, doesn’t get as much attention in my life as I’d like. That has meant an absence of 2023 updates. But that hasn’t meant that it has stopped. We just finished putting a cohort of Communication Design students through the process! So, I thought I’d post some updates. I’ll start with the topics we gave students this year. Quick aside, if this is the first time you are encountering VMH, the process works as follows. Psychologists put together a handful of topics that are mental health rela ..read more

Emotional abuse is widespread, is often difficult to recognise, and can trigger mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, as well as the compromising of physical health. Studies demonstrate there is also an increased danger of emotionally abusive relationships becoming physically violent. Therefore, it is critical to the community that we approach building knowledge and resilience around abuse from when people are first experiencing intimate relationships, enabling them to not only identify the presence of emotional abuse early and act, but also to ac ..read more

Yesterday afternoon/evening I attended an Arts and Health Alliance (AaHA) event. The Alliance is a coming together of the three universities (soon maybe two universities) in South Australia to celebrate the many ways that the Arts and Health can collaborate. There was a small mention of it in this InDaily arts round-up article. At the core of the event was the launch of the report ‘Telling the Story of Arts and Health in South Australia‘ by Tully Barnett, Alex Cothren and Joanne Arcuili. The report covers the relationship between Arts and Health and the many projects that have shaped Arts and ..read more

Each year, the best student concepts from Visualising Mental Health are exhibited at the Kerry Packer Gallery, alongside other work from MatchStudio. Full details of the exhibition can be found here. It is running from the 6th October to the 2nd November, 2022, so get in quick! I was briefly at the opening night and got a quick snap of some of the project posters (see featured image). I was also amazed to see the other projects that MatchStudio is doing of this type. A core feature of a MatchStudio project is to apply design thinking to solving complex problems and getting inter-disciplinary i ..read more

I last posted in 2021 with an update on the topic that students in 2021 were working on. I’ve been very quiet since. But Visualising Mental Health is going strong and we’re still around. The students for 2022 are finishing up their projects as we speak. I believe us psychologists will be getting a sneak peak at the best ones in the coming weeks. The team at Cre8d helped me fix up a bunch of issues with the website and simplify it overall. We also have exciting news that we had an academic paper accepted for publication that I’ll be able to share here soon that tells the history of VMH, outline ..read more

Restore is a care box that supports survivors of domestic violence. While survivors experience various forms of abuse, the emotional and psychological impacts of domestic violence can have a wide range of long-lasting effects on a survivor’s mental health. Existing services mainly target victims by getting them out of the abusive environment or after with professional therapy. Restore supports survivors’ long term in the comfort of their own home by increasing their sense of independence in order to recognise signs and break negative patterns. The way that Restore is designed as a care box com ..read more

Children in foster care experience many changes which impact their emotional, social and educational wellbeing. Sunny Meets Her Family is the first installment in a series of interactive picture books that explore topics surrounding children in foster care. These picture books work in collaboration with social workers specialising in foster care and are given to new foster care parents. A key factor of successful placement and stability in a foster home is effective communication between foster parent and child. The book includes a support guide for new parents to help build communication skil ..read more

The transition into parenthood is one of the most profound changes experienced in a woman’s life. New mums may become overloaded, lost or exhausted at the thought of all their new duties as a full-time carer of another human, and at the thought of their old life and identity disintegrating. Ease is an app created for new mums as a preventative measure of postpartum depression. The app creates a support network, consisting of family and/or friends, helping to build a strong community of support around the new mother, helping strengthen resilience in their day-to-day life. At times new mothers c ..read more

A quick update for the 2021 projects. It all kicked off when we gave students the topic for the year, on resilience. We asked them to pick a target population, identify a stressor that population faces and then consider where in the process they’d like to support that population and how. Who are you targeting and why? What is (are) the stressors/ adversity that impact this group and for which you intend to make them more resilient When are you targeting them (pre, during, post stressor, ongoing) For pre-emptive interventions, how are you going to convince people who have yet to experience th ..read more