Implementing Service Design Methods Towards Ideal Journeys in Student Mental Health
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Date
2021-04
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Abstract
While mental health resources and treatment for college students are at their most plentiful, barriers persist that create inaccessibility to mental health treatment, including long wait times for treatment and a long-standing social stigma against mental health challenges. While treatment has proven to be very effective, a vast majority of students with a mental illness do not seek help and there is little to no data about the experience towards the appropriate treatment. Moreover, there is perceived little input from people who are routinely placed in the position of a patient rather than as experts of their experiences. Inquiry into these experiences seek to address the gap between the services formed by facilitators of student mental healthcare and the realities of the live experiences of the students in any relation to those services.
The research intent was to enact a service design methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of the current student experience in seeking help for mental health challenges and inform how design for services can improve and further facilitate these experiences. Service design is used to help organizations develop a holistic view of their services from the perspective of the customer and create more efficient and desirable services by centering the goals of the users. This methodology aimed to employ the ideas of Ohio State college students who have lived experiences interacting with mental health services and resources to inform the development and design of a more ideal help-seeking experience. Resulting design artifacts illustrate the opportunities, informed by student responses, for further development of services and recommendations for ensuring more successful experiences interacting with campus mental health services.
Description
The Arts: 1st Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)
Keywords
Participatory Design, Service Design, Mental Health, Design Research