Mental health, technology and behaviour change

Mark Brown@markoneinfour

The sandwich toaster...

To pinch a joke from The Viz:

Over 1 million sandwich toasters are bought each year, making a total of up to 2 million toasted

sandwiches before being put at the back of the cupboard

Tech is elective.

We choose to use it.

The biggest risk for tech in relation to mental health is being an answer in search of a

question... Like the sandwich toaster

People don't suffer mental health difficulties.

Mental health difficulties cause impairments.

The extent to which those impairments disable you depends on the extent to

which it is possible to either adapt yourself or you environment

Whose behaviour, whose change?

If we talk about behaviour change, who is that change in benefit of?

The interests of services aren't necessarily the interests of people with mental health

difficulties or their families

Are you trying to influence their behaviour for your benefit or for theirs?

A dangerous fallacy

“Getting people to be better at using services is the same as getting them to

have better lives”

This fallacy is reinforced by where the money currently sits

What do people with mental health difficulties want...?

People with mental health difficulties want...

The same as everyone else, but they might need to get there a different way

So the question is:

What behaviours do people with mental health difficulties want to change?

Why do we find it difficult to see people with mental health difficulties

as consumers?

Perhaps because we are conditioned to define people like me by our conditions, rather than our

desires, hopes, obligations and dreams?

What does all of this mean for tech, behaviour change and mental

health?

What tech does must appeal to an individual consumer, not a 'map of their needs or

deficiencies'.

A mental health difficulty might impede your ability to achieve a certain goal, but that goal might not

relate to your mental health difficulty

People must want to change their own behaviour otherwise they'll never elect to use the tech in

the first place

I'm just one person with mental health difficulties but...

Big role for tech as assistive technology but not necessarily big investment

More market research, discussion and exploration with people with mental health difficulties as a

potential marketMore small solutions to small problems...

Help us to solve a problem or a need we have, don't try to solve us as if we were a problem

Mark Brown

mark@socialspider.com

@markoneinfour

www.oneinfourmag.org

www.socialspider.com