Emotional Service Dogs

This is probably the most humbling, and exciting thing that I have read into this week. I am aware of pets and animals being used in a variety of care relationships, from guide dogs to patient as therapy in hospitals and often more experimentally in design projects and hypothetical futures.

Every now and again something pops up that you know is important. At the time you really don't understand it's significance or where it is going to lead you, but you know that there is a spark of an idea there. This is a spark, and I don't know what the fire looks like, but nurturing it seems like the only natural thing to do.

Emotional Service Dogs currently assist with the following tasks, amongst countless others.

- Picking up/ retrieving objects or aiding with mobility when the handler is dizzy from medication or has physical psychospmatic symptoms.
- Waking the handler if the handler sleeps through alarms or cannot get them-self out of bed.
- Alerting to and/ or responding to episodes (i.e. mood changes, panic attacks, oncoming anxiety...)
- Reminding the handler to take medication if the handler cannot remember on their own or with the use of an alarm.
-alerting to and/ or distracting the handler from repetitive and obsessive thoughts or behaviours.

http://www.iaadp.org/psd_tasks.html
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread7204.html

Psychomedia and CineMania

The media plays a massive role in influencing our understanding and molding our beliefs. Many people will absorb their earliest understanding of mental health through media. Whilst the media might offer great exposure to break stigmas, there is no denying that it's was probably a major actor in fueling and in some sense forming the initial sigma of 'the crazies'. The linked site leads to many insightful links gathering the stigmatization of mental health through cinema and media. Below an example of how pervasive fear of psychosis and other mental health conditions can be carelessly driven by the media.

http://www.mentalhealthstigma.com/cinemania.html

Madnesss Radio

An amazing collection of radio programs made by people with diagnosed mental health disorders. exploring the edges of illness and daily life.

Uncovering taboos and exploring personal experiences that create a community dialog around how we understand mental health.

http://www.madnessradio.net/madness-and-spirituality-kboo-fm-will-hall-and-myriam-rahman-audio

Free e-help for Mental Health

Anonymous self help programmes available online and accessible from anywhere in the world, it begings to sound more like the approaches to get teenagers to have sexually transmitted infection tests than assistance foe mental health issues. Somewhere in making this service accessible to everyone, the idea that this target audience are probably people with emotional struggles in need of open conversation and support.

The market for self help apps is huge and growing fast with more sophisticated meta-data collection in all mobile devices. But I still don't see many people asking what, are doing with all this new meta data that we are recording and storing? When are we looking at it, who are we sharing it with and what happens when different ets of data collide?

As an import bridge between the physical and the virtual or augmented, the e-help market has a massive potential. Personally the most exciting area emerges when the input of data from physical interactions or immersive experiences becomes part of the entire service and that there is a interactive relationship between data and environment.

 http://www.ehub.anu.edu.au/welcome.php 

Artists reflecting society's thinking

Yet another article reporting the mass interest in mental health from Artists.

A separation seems to exist between the awareness art brings to a subject in comparison to design, though the starting point may be of exactly the same value. Is it that artists can be seen to be inspired by Mental Health but Designers are generally just trying to find a way to make money from it? Or do we just value 'art' as something more cultured and historically valuable - as the forefront of something deeper. Rather than a question of semantics I think there is a grey area surrounding what design is proud of, how do we as designers showcase ourselves inside the industry. I don't remember the last time I read a 'cool design blog' that focused on systems, service and experience.

'It can’t be coincidence that as more of us confront the anguish of dementia, artists are becoming intrigued with shifting memory and altered personality, with dementia’s deeply unsettling effect on the self and on others. '

http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/the-caregivers-bookshelf-a-doctors-decline/?emc=eta1

Wiki what's wrong with me?!

At point in our relationship where we turn to Wikipedia for almost everything that we don't think we know, it seems perfectly normal that wikiHow should cover awareness for health and care. Why then does it feel a little uncomfortable to see the above article? Clearly this is a space where people turn for advice,  but in the current formal there is limited dimensions to the advice and no potential for emotion or support. Perhaps it is the level of finger pointing, and responsibility that comes with allegations and labels of becoming the victim or sufferer - and perhaps, that all too easily damage can be done with the best intentions at hand.

Where does the wikiHow generation go to find support? How is the way that information is presented affecting the way that it is absorbed. And finally in what way could wikiHow type platforms be enahnced to promote the understanding of mental well-being?

http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-if-a-Child-Has-Been-Traumatized-by-an-Event

Design to create wellbeing

After just returning from a trip to Helsinki with the SSES White Label guys and meeting a host of energized entrepreneurs the city seems to be flagging itself up everywhere. First an old issue of Monocle listing Helsinki as 2011's most livable city, and then this post by John Thackara introducing the city as next year's World Design Capital

It'll be interesting to see what rolls out of this and what the cross over or emphasis on mental well-being is.

As Thackara says,

'If WDC 2012 marks the moment that we stop pretending that all design is marvelous, or even defensible, just because it is design, then great. If Aalto's designers and their city partners discover that wellbeing demands more creative innovation than they anticipated, and pens the way to a vast amount of new work, then better still.'

 http://observersroom.designobserver.com/johnthackara/post/world-capital-of-wellbeing/29988/

Guardian Rant with a little realistic insight

This article had a lot of activity from the #mentalhealth community on twitter. Mixing stats and research with personal opinion is a perilous game - evidenced by the comments after this article, which have as much interest as the article itself. It gives insight that the expression of public opinion around mental health is very active, but naturally is also confined to those already engaged in the issue.  On the plus side these comments are also a cautionary reminder that mental health is a sensitive area and there are many people with a lots of personal experiences and opinions.

Are doctors the guardians of our wellbeing? And if they are then perhaps, family and friends or teachers and politicians should be part of the network of guardians we entrust our wellbeing in.

If doctors – rather than politicians or teachers or priests or friends and family – are to be the guardians of our wellbeing, then doctors really should be provided with new kinds of "treatments" for their patients... : anything that builds up the individual's inner resources and allows emotions to be reflected on can't be bad.

 And the following comment summarizes well the discussion that followed quite well:

• AllyF

  6 September 2011 7:01PM
  I broadly share some of the concerns expressed in this article, but some of it also worries me.
  It's one thing to argue that pharmacological remedies are over-prescribed and ineffective compared to social support, exercise regimes, healthier lifestyle advice etc. This does not mean that mental illness is not widespread and serious. Both can be true. 
  
  Modern society makes us ill. Workplace stress, social dislocation and alienation, poor living envirionments, financial worries, social inequality, economic problems and unemployment, all these things have a significant and measurable effect on mental health. 
  
  Tell me Lisa, which of the 165 million Europeans do you want to slice out of the statistics for mental ill health? The alcoholics drinking their consciousness away in Eastern Europe? The working women with post-natal depression? The self-harmers? The suicide risks? The eating disorders? Those paralysed and housebound by social phobia or panic attacks? Those who can't get out of bed in the morning due to depression? Who are you talking about? Come on, spell it out!
  Yes, I am quite sure that the total figure of 165 million includes some "worried well." But unless you have some kind of research or estimate as to how many, what proportion we are talking about, it is hard to see what your point is.
  
  The reality is that mental illness is still widely misunderstood and misrepresented. People with serious, life-threatening illnesses are regularly told to "buck up" and "pull themselves together." Outright hostility and denial remains commonplace. And now even our benefits system is pulling out all the stops to push seriously ill people off disability benefits because they're supposedly not ill enough to be out of work.
  
  Against that context, it is actually seriously unhelpful to be adding to the narrative that portrays many people with mental illnesses as frauds and malingerers. 
  
  I hope you're proud of yourself.
  

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/06/mental-illness-medicalising-normality

Animals spark our Emotional Triggers

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=140116969&m=140129072

Animals trigger the amigdela in the brain, which is specialized at alerting us to things that are emotionally important to us. Suggesting that the human brain is especially sensitive to animals - over things.

Appears in Nature - Nueroscience

Art saves Mental Health!

High profile Artists, such as Jake and Dinos Chapman, Whitney McVeigh and Tracey Emin, showing and selling work in aid of Mental Health, there's nothing wrong with that. It is in fact a refreshing slice to see Vive Clique and backing from many well regarded arts and culture lynch pins.

What goes unchanged is that even the mental health's own community regards this as a great event in raising awareness of mental health.

"The exhibition aims to raise funds for creative therapies and also aims to highlight and challenge the stigma and discrimination faced by people with mental health problems."

The question seems to now ask itself; is it enough that people are, aware of the existence of mental health? If so, I think the job is pretty much done. Why do we not see events such as this embracing all the wonders of mental health that will actually interest people? Instead we see a charity raising funds for sick people. I'm sure a lot of money will be raised and perhaps this ultimately is still the goal today.

Do our Young People really have Mentla Health Problems

Professor Jim Lucey of St. Patricks's University Hospital asks what we can do about the mental health of our young. 

This short article gives general stats around the current state of mental health amongst young people and makes a pretty grand statement about what is required to improve the mental health in children and adolescents. With this said there are some quite shocking numbers in there that cannot be ignored. 

"We could start by valuing the qualities needed for mental health in children and adolescents and working together to promote these qualities. These include developing the ability to initiate, develop and sustain mutually satisfying personal relationships, to become aware of others and empathise with them; to use and enjoy solitude, to have fun and to learn; to develop a sense of right and wrong; to resolve problems and setbacks and learn from them."

http://www.blog.stpatrickshosp.ie/?p=327