Paradoxo
An immersive experience into mental health issues
Overview
Back in 2017 when this project was done, I felt the urge to talk about something that was personal to me, something that I felt wasn't being discussed enough, so I began my research by questioning myself
"How can I help society to see depression with empathy?"
Even though mental health institutes and many works of literature presented the issue, somehow this never reached society in all its levels. There was a need to make the subject more accessible to everyone, but I started with my home country and with people my age, since I found out through my research that Brazil is not only the 5th country in the world with more depressive people between the age of 15 to 45, but is also on the top 10 when it comes to suicide by the same age group. so I reframed my question to
"How can I improve society's understanding of depression in Brazil? And how can I make Brazilians empathise with those who suffer from it?"
The problem
Even though depression is no news, our century has the biggest incidence of the disease, with an estimative of 30% of the world's population suffering from it. The technological advances and the massive usage of social media are the main triggers for depression, and with religion stigmatising the issue, it became even harder to talk about it with family or friends. Besides, when someone did speak out, they were treated as "lazy" or "ungrateful", since depression isn't taken as serious as diseases like Cancer or other visible and tangible afflictions.
Also, treatment was not always available. Mental health issues have a history of being treated as a "luxury", allowing only the ones with better financial status to seek appropriate treatment.
However, there were many initiatives from mental hospitals and psychologists to make treatment accessible to all financial and age groups, but because of the stigma, the word almost never reached out to the most fragile part of our society.
The stigma is the root of the problem, almost nullifying depression as a disease.
Methodology
The initial hypothesis couldn't be proved with research alone, so interviews with mental health professionals, diagnosed patients and also people that had (or not) depressed people in their lives were conducted to first figure out what they thought of the matter. There were four main objectives to be reached
Analyse
What people understand by depression and anxiety?
Understand
The real reason that impedes most people from seeking treatment
Find out
What are the public initiatives to support young people with depression?
Identify
Diseases that people are more empathetic towards and why that is
Some of the most insightful quotes:
Mental Health Professional
"We [psychologists] understand how pressing this issue is, but without a wider support from the public health sector, there's not much that we can do to improve knowledge of the more fragile population."
Solution
After the insights, the conclusion was that depression needed to be more tangible and comparable to other physical diseases such as cancer. Also, the concept of depression needed to be explained in a very comprehensive way through its different stages, which led to a gamification of this experience. It also had to be something people don't "go through" alone, so the inspiration from Escape rooms was also present in this project.
People need to see and feel depression in a physical way, and they have to understand that it is impossible to go through it alone.
The experience
Much like the 5 stages of grief, the project enacts the 5 stages of depression. The use of senses such as hearing, sight and touch helped to create a more physical experience, that had to happen in pairs for the collaborative factor. The 5 stages of the experience are: