One of the projects I am involved with is called Visualising Mental Health (VMH).
It is a project at the intersection of psychology and design.
In collaboration with Match Studio, who are a design studio situated within the University of South Australia, we get 3rd Year Communication Design students to develop mental health communication prototypes.
We give them mental health and psychology-related topics and get them to develop unique vehicles for communicating those topics to the general public.
For example, for the last few years we’ve given the students a topic on ’emotions’ and encouraged them to educate people on emotions using whatever methods they like. This has seen all sorts of prototypes developed: apps, books, toys, games, campaigns, curriculums, journals.
We have been doing this project since 2016.
I just finished putting up all the 2019 student projects on the website.
We were very lucky this year in that the South Australian Mental Health Commission (SAMHC) got involved. They are helping us take a few projects from this year to the next level.
One called Monster Me is a mental fitness game for kids.
The other, called Mother in the Making is a psychoeducational journal for new mothers (we will be developing a parallel version for fathers as well).
This is such a cool project to be involved with. My main role is as a psychologist, helping the design students understand the topics they are given. I do this along with a team of other psychologists: Sarah, Richard, Rachel and Heather.
With 2019 drawing to a close, the whole VMH team will be meeting early in 2020 to work out what we are doing for that year.
If you are a psychologist or design professional in Australia who would like to get involved, feel free to email me (gareth.furber@gmail.com).
Dr Gareth Furber 