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DESIGN FOR MENTAL HEALTH
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About Design for Mental Health
The London team has now successfully completed their pilot UK project to improve well-being among mental health service users in the London borough of Tower Hamlets and the new service they developed is being run by Mind, the the leading mental health charity in England and Wales.
The team investigated how the (transformation) design process could help by carrying out first-hand and secondary research and forming a multi-disciplinary team involving all of the necessary stakeholders. From this point they visited people and venues across London to map the existing services provided and gather feedback from other service users to find out where needs were not being met.
Based on their research findings the team organised a number of workshops at three different venues to generate ideas on what type of services would help. They then analysed all the concepts to pick out the key principles and compiled a list of six main ideas including: 1) Improving cooking skills and nutrition through classes and a vegetable patch, 2) Using unwanted exercise equipment to create a gym at a local day centre, and 3) Supported volunteer placements at local charities.
Three further consultations were then organised and everyone who attended was interviewed individually by the team and asked to rate each of the six ideas against certain criteria and provide comments. The most popular proposal was a weekend support service including food preparation and a variety of different activities. This tied in closely with research suggesting a gap in existing service provision at the weekends and the importance of developing a strong social network.
The team set about prototyping the new service by promoting and running a number of trial events and making changes each time based on feedback from participants and volunteers. Part of this included developing methods for measuring the services impact on well-being. Once the success of the new service was clearly shown the group started searching for a suitable partner and the necessary funding, both of which are now in place.
A huge thank you to all the volunteers and service users involved in this project for their dedication and input, to Awards for All for the funding and to everyone at Mind in Tower Hamlets for keeping it going.
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Project Location: London
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Project Team
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