Create trauma-informed content that builds trust and prevents retraumatisation—in real time Rembrandt Editor helps you write accessible, inclusive content that works for everyone, including the 16-25% of people with disabilities. Get real-time feedback to make your writing more considerate and empathetic.
However, engaging people in research can sometimes become a source of re-traumatisation or activation for the people participating in the research. So being a trauma-informed content designer means not only focussing on the outcomes that designers produce, but also on the process that designers use to arrive at those outcomes. This means considering trauma-informed design research as the collective responsibility of anyone involved in making it happen, from design researchers to content designers and others.
The traditional focus of work on personality and behavior has tended toward “major outcomes” such as health or antisocial behavior, or small sets of behaviors observable over short periods in laboratories or in convenience samples. In a community sample, we examined a wide set (400) of mundane, incidental or “every day” behavioral acts, the frequencies of which were reported over the past year. Using an exploratory methodology similar to genomic approaches (relying on the False Discovery Rate) revealed 26 prototypical acts for Intellect, 24 acts for Extraversion, 13 for Emotional Stability, nine for Conscientiousness, and six for Agreeableness. Many links were consistent with general intuition—for instance, low Conscientiousness with work and procrastination. Some of the most robust associations, however, were for acts too specific for a priori hypothesis. For instance, Extraversion was strongly associated with telling dirty jokes, Intellect with “loung[ing] around [the] house without clothes on”, and Agreeableness with singing in the shower. Frequency categories for these acts changed with markedly non-linearity across Big Five Z-scores. Findings may help ground trait scores in emblematic acts, and enrich understanding of mundane or common behavioral signatures of the Big Five.
A new report from Crisis Text Line and Common Good Labs offers solutions to the youth mental health crisis based on over 87,000 anonymized conversations with young people who talked about what helps them cope.
Reasons to Stay is a suicide prevention project reaching people at difficult moments through anonymous letters written by volunteers. Each letter on this site was written by a real person and delivered to you at random when you visited this page. This space exists as a reminder that we are not alone, even when it feels that way. There is someone, somewhere who wrote you a letter because they care. If you’d like to, you can write your own letter to a stranger, offering warmth, hope and connection to someone when they need it most.
A psychiatrist couldn’t keep up with the demand for mental health care. So he hired grandmothers. He asked himself a simple question: who do people already trust with their problems? The majority said it was grandmothers. They are wise, respected and embedded in the community. He trained them in basic therapy for common mental health disorders and gave them benches in public spaces. The results speak for themselves : → Thousands sought support → Depression symptoms dropped → A randomised trial showed it worked better than standard primary care
Beyond its physical health impact, the COVID-19 pandemic also resulted in grief from loss of loved ones, isolation due to social distancing, stress, fear, and economic distress—all of which impacted mental health. How Right Now/Qué Hacer Ahora (HRN) is an award-winning, national campaign that provides emotional support to people disproportionately affected by COVID-19. We conducted a theory-based, culturally responsive evaluation to assess the campaign’s effect on coping behaviors and resiliency between summer 2020 and spring 2021. We surveyed HRN’s priority audiences (older adults/caregivers and those with preexisting health conditions, experiencing violence, or economic distress) in English and Spanish using NORC’s national probability panel, AmeriSpeak, over three waves. We also analyzed social media data and monitored HRN website traffic and triangulated these data to understand the campaign’s full impact. Campaign exposure was associated with people who were experiencing higher levels of stress and were more likely to seek information to support their emotional well-being. Campaign exposure was also positively associated with increased feelings of resilience and confidence in using coping strategies, especially for people experiencing violence or economic distress and people from racial and ethnic groups. Findings demonstrate the campaign’s success in reaching its intended audiences with the mental health support they needed.
new research is showing that people can impact their happiness levels through frequent small moments of joy which can train the brain to reach for positive feelings rather than negative ones like anger, fear or worry.
Emotions and worries can reduce individuals’ available attention and affect economic decisions. In a four-week experiment with 2,384 US adults, offering free access to a popular mindfulness meditation app (Headspace) that costs $13 per month improves mental health, productivity and decisionmaking. First, it causes a 0.44 standard deviation reduction in symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, comparable to the impacts of expensive in-person therapy, with improvements even among participants with minimal or mild symptoms at baseline. Second, it increases earnings on a proofreading task by 1.9 percent. Third, it makes decision-making more stable across emotional states, reducing the interference of personal worries with risk choices. Overall, our results demonstrate the potential of affordable mindfulness meditation apps to improve mental health, productivity, and the impact of emotions on economic decisions.
Tested is an award-winning comic book that features diverse characters affected by a broad range of health conditions and related social issues. With a touch of heart and humor, 'Tested' depicts a diverse cast of characters affected by stigma, HIV, STIs, substance use, LGBTQ+ issues, and much more.
Results In the 34 day period after the three events with the strongest public attention (the song’s release, the MTV Video Music Awards 2017, and Grammy Awards 2018), Lifeline received an excess of 9915 calls (95% confidence interval 6594 to 13 236), an increase of 6.9% (95% confidence interval 4.6% to 9.2%, P
Welcome to the Entertainment Industry’s Guide to Mental Health Storytelling Developed by a groundbreaking coalition of mental health experts and entertainment industry leaders.
“I understand how you feel.“
Of the 293 apps shortlisted as offering a therapeutic treatment for anxiety and/or depression, 162 (55.3%) mentioned an evidence-based framework in their app store descriptions. Of the 293 apps, 88 (30.0%) claimed to use cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, 46 (15.7%) claimed to use mindfulness, 27 (9.2%) claimed to use positive psychology, 10 (3.4%) claimed to use dialectical behavior therapy, 5 (1.7%) claimed to use acceptance and commitment therapy, and 20 (6.8%) claimed to use other techniques. Of the 162 apps that claimed to use a theoretical framework, only 10 (6.2%) had published evidence for their efficacy.
Our new campaign – called Spring of Hope – shares one powerful and uplifting illustration per day, every day, until the end of May –– https://fineacts.co/hope. All works, commissioned specifically for the campaign, are published under a Creative Commons License and are free to print, share and adapt non-commercially – for anyone who needs a dose of hope in these trying times.
designing for emotional states
Immense amounts of information are now accessible to people, including information that bears on their past, present and future. An important research challenge is to determine how people decide to seek or avoid information. Here we propose a framework of information-seeking that aims to integrate the diverse motives that drive information-seeking and its avoidance. Our framework rests on the idea that information can alter people’s action, affect and cognition in both positive and negative ways. The suggestion is that people assess these influences and integrate them into a calculation of the value of information that leads to information-seeking or avoidance. The theory offers a framework for characterizing and quantifying individual differences in information-seeking, which we hypothesize may also be diagnostic of mental health. We consider biases that can lead to both insufficient and excessive information-seeking. We also discuss how the framework can help government agencies to assess the welfare effects of mandatory information disclosure.
demand for depression drugs is also witnessing a decline as end-users have more coping options at their disposal. The huge popularity of mental health apps, such as Headspace, Calm, Moodnotes, Pacifica, and SuperBetter has given patients more control over how they manage depression.
