Context 

“Mental health” can be described as the psychological, emotional and social well-being of an individual. Besides that, mental health can be caused by many influential factors such as genetics or family history of illness, personal and workplace stress, exposures to trauma and toxins, lack of access to the necessary healthcare support and many more.  Mental health plays an important role  in every stage of a person’s life in order for the person to live a stable and healthy life. As a result, a proper and healthy mind will lead to a properly functioning human. 

 

As a matter of fact, one of the main parts that provides well-being to our mental health is the human brain. Often, humans will neglect the conditions of the human brain and only prioritise the health of their physical bodies as they think that mental health would not be an important issue to deal with compared to physical health. As a result, the number of mentally ill patients are on the rise as time comes and something has to be done to put a halt to this issue. It is vital for a person to keep both of their body and mind fit and healthy at all times so that they do not contract any mental illnesses. Both mental and physical health are intertwined and equally important for peak performance and quality of a better life. Whereas on the other hand, mental illness still remains a taboo to some people in parts of the world and others are already learning how to combat mental illness together. In comparison to other health issues, many people choose to suffer in silence with their mental illnesses  because they are afraid of being judged or discriminated against after opening up about their problems. However, mental issue awareness is already becoming a hot topic in society as more people are beginning to address and discuss their mental health issues openly. 

 

Consequently, the main goal of both projects is to promote a better mental well-being for the mentally illed with the help of design created by the designer. Moreover, the designer also aims to improve the societal and cultural sympathetic perspective on mental health so that those who are mentally ill can open up about their mental issues without getting discriminated against in the eyes of the society. The mission of a graphic designer is to illustrate their message through visual graphics. With that, the designer aims to help the mentally ill to combat their problems about mental illness  from her work and designs. Therefore, it is very influential for the society to be delivered with the veracious information so that  the mentally ill will not feel  shame while coming out with their problems.

​

​

Project

As mentioned, both projects are designed in such a way to promote mental well-being. To go into a more in depth intention, Eunoia, the title for the independent project, is to promote a mental well-being for the mental sufferers by instilling positive thinking. Eunoia is a Greek origin word which describes a beautiful thinking and a well mind. It solely describes the positive thinking of an individual and does not persevere with any negative or pessimistic thoughts. This project is created to mainly motivate the university students that are suffering from mental illnesses such as stress, anxiety and depression. The intention has been illustrated through a series of food puns with colourful colours that act as a mood enhancer for the audience. 

 

In fact, colours and food consumption plays a role in fostering a mental well-being. Colours are used in art therapies in which creative expressions in artistic mediums as part of a healing process. To boost mental health, the relationship between a person’s diet and their mental health is complex. However, a healthy food consumption can be advantageous at some point of time. According to a study, (Gomstyn, n.d.), a diet of healthy foods results in setting up lesser mood swings and a happier outlook which is able to help with the symptoms of depression and anxiety. 

 

 On the other hand, a self-care kit named “Let Your Brain Breathe” was produced for the external brief. In this project, a self-care kit is introduced as a type of relief for the university students that are facing mental problems. The purpose of the self-care kit is to boost positivity by regenerating a healthy mindset with the help of love and happiness. The self-care kit consists of different items or as known as merch that aims to help the targeted audience to release their inner self and problems without the need of opening up to anyone verbally. 

 

​

Research

In order to achieve a better context, this study is further researched on mental illnesses. For the independent project and external brief, both primary and secondary research were conducted. For the project titled “Eunoia’, a survey has been conducted to gather results from the audience. The survey consists of questions that relate to personal information of the respondents and their mental illness condition. Inside the specific survey, the designer has collected a total of 60 responses where half of the responses were made by male and the other half female. Besides that, 71.7% of the respondents are between the ages of 18-24 which are university students and these are the group of people that usually face mental health problems the most. 11.7% of the respondents were aged between 25-34 years old where in this age the fresh graduate students has just stepped into the working environment and may deal with stresses they have never faced with during their university life. The rest of the data is taken from the audiences that aged from 35 years old and above. Moreover, in the survey recorded 80% of the respondents are still students where 11.7% of the audience are working employees. The data for this is proportionate to the age data. 

 

In the second part of my “Eunoia” survey, half of the respondents (30 respondents) have encountered problems that have come  from their work or daily life whereas the other half of the targeted audience has not experienced any sort of problems from their work or daily life. On the other hand, 76.7 percent of the respondents have faced emotional problems or indescribable feelings during their work or daily life. 21.7 % of the respondents have not faced any emotional issues from their private or working life. Furthermore, 24 of the 60 respondents have rated their mental health as average and 23 respondents have rated their overall mental health on the good side. Only 13 of the overall respondents had bad mental health for their overall experience. 63.3% of the respondents have felt particularly low or down recently whereas 36.7 of them have not felt sad at all. 

 

Based on the next section of the questionnaire,  35 of the 60 people had felt low or down often where the rest of the audience had not had any sad feelings these days. On the other hand, 23 of the respondents have felt fam and peaceful most of the time and the other 20 from the audiences have felt gloomy and melancholy respectively. The other 9 respondents have felt energetic and enthusiastic most of the time and the remaining respondents have felt angry and frustrated in recent days. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a hit on most of the people. 70% of the respondents have been affected by the pandemic thus making their mood negatively affected. 30% of the respondents have not had their mood affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. For the last part of the “Eunoia” survey, 66.7% of the respondents have gotten their mental health examination done more than a year ago which contributed to the largest margin of this question. 11.7% of the respondents had gotten their mental examination checked a year ago and 15% of the respondents had done their check half a year ago. 

 

Since it is now the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone is being locked up in their home and not being able to step out of the house. As a designer, the creativities and inspirations often come from everywhere and anywhere they are. Unfortunately, due to this pandemic, our movements are being restricted and it has caused 40% of respondents to show that they feel down somewhat often during this period. According to this static from my secondary research, about 1 in every 25 persons suffers from serious mental illness. And according to the national institute of mental health, women are more likely to experience serious mental health than men. 

 

For the external brief of the project, the designer had created a ‘self-care kit’. It was named “ Let Your Brain Breath”. The main purpose of the self-care kit is to boost positivity by regenerating a healthy mindset with the help of love and happiness. The designer had gathered a couple of audience members to conduct her interview. The designer had incorporated questions such as “What are your understanding about mental health”, “How frequently have you felt so worried about something that you were unable to sleep at night?”, “Are you unable to work under pressure?”, “What are your worst experiences with mental issues?” and “How do you usually deal with mental issues?” in her interview. Throughout all of these interview sessions, the designer had been able to get a better understanding of the interviewee emotionally.

 

The designer will include 3 of the interview sessions from her interview in this section as a summary of the total 12 interviews she had done. The first interview she had was with Ng who is 21 years old this year and also a university student. Ng thinks that mental health should include emotional, psychological and social well-being that will affect the way a person thinks, feels and acts. Besides that, Ng has had no worries at night that caused her to be unable to sleep at night. Ng is also able to work under pressure as she plans her tasks based on priorities so that when she works under pressure she will slowly move forward. Furthermore, Ng had included that when she deals with mental issues, she would not be able to eat well therefore causing her weight to drop drastically when she is under peer pressure as she misses meals. Ng will seek help from her sisters when she deals with mental issues as she thinks that letting it out is better than keeping the problem to herself.

 

The next interviewee that the designer interviews will be Yong. Yong is currently a female student that is 20 years old. Based on Yong’s understanding, Yong thinks that mental health is all about depression, the ability to cope with stress and how to deal with their emotional well-being. On the other hand, Yong will have a sleepless night once every two months due to worrying too much about something. Yong is also unable to work under pressure therefore she tends to do all her work early so that she does not need to rush her work last minute. Yong has had a bad experience with mental illness as she can’t focus on her daily tasks as the incident has left her scarred. Whenever she talks about this topic she will feel insecure and tremble as she still could not get over this issue that happened years ago. When Yong has mental problems, she will usually listen to music, sleep it off or just find someone to talk to just to ease it off.

 

The last interviewee the designer had interviewed was Chan. Chan is a 21 year old university student and her definition of mental health is a state of wellbeing in the mind that affects the way a person thinks, feels and acts with life. In addition, Chan does not feel worried often that will cause her to have sleepless nights. The only time Chan will have sleepless nights is when she is too stressed regarding her work or the issue is about her personal life. Chan is also able to work under pressure as she will make herself busy so that she would not think on that particular issue that causes her to be distracted. Furthermore, she has had a bad experience with mental issues as she will have anxiety attacks in the middle of the night due to the fact that she can’t control herself and will cry and fidget. Lastly, she will open up to her close friends when she is having mental issues. She would also seek advice from her friends so that she will feel better.

 

Design

Starting off from the designs of the independent project. It is a menu designed zine consisting of  a list of sentences and illustrations. The sentences are mainly the opposite of what a person usually suffering from mental illnesses will think of. But instead of the original sentence itself, some words are being replaced by foods and beverages to encourage and motivate the audience. The sentences are then paired with a food illustration each. It is designed in a publication form as it is a touch point where it will be located in areas where most humans ingest most of the visual information. According to research (Barshay, 2019), students of all ages tend to acquire more information while reading on a physical printed content rather than on a screen. Through publication, graphic design can help boost in engaging readers, inform, educate, persuade and raise awareness to the target audiences. 

 

Moving on to the external brief, a self-care kit was designed and produced. The self-care kit is designed in a feminized theme named “Let Your Brain Breathe”. As can be seen from the name, this kit mainly reminds the users to let their brain breathe, which is to let your brain have sufficient oxygen. When a brain has sufficient oxygen, it can work better. From the previous research, women have a higher chance of experiencing serious mental illnesses. Therefore it is designed in a feminine theme for the women, but is also applicable for men to utilize. This self-care kit contains a collection of various items in a box that helps the users to find love and happiness. The items are produced and designed in such a way it is able to let the mental sufferers relax themselves or get distracted from their mind for a period of time. A handbook is also included in the box that provides information on the usage of the self-care kit and a self-love challenge which is to be completed after 31 days.