Mental Resilience Designed into systems.
At the core of my belief, I want to help people overcome the fear of things they needn’t and take a step forward in building a world with lesser anxiety, depression and phobias.
Mental health is receiving a lot of traction and we’re dealing with a new world problem with an old world solution which is drugging the people who face mental health issues, making them comatose, tame and giving pleasure to the limbic system to forget and overcome them. For example, The most common prescription for clinical anxiety and depression are drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro which are categorised as Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) which basically inhibit reabsorption of serotonin leaving excess serotonin, and thus creating a drug-induced sense of pleasure and satisfaction. This is exactly like giving crutches to the guy with flexibility issues instead of physical therapy.
Modern Upbringing
Children avoid being alone. We give them constant stimulation to keep themselves occupied while keeping them in constant familiar environments. This may seem normal to all of us as the daily reflex of a parent to engage their child these create significant impact on the child, get carried forward and become the root for probably one of the biggest problems adults face. Examples of some are, not being able to stay with one’s own thoughts, feeling uncomfortable in spaces, having the anxiety of newness etc. Children copy what their parents do, and if it is being in a comfortable place with a device that engages constantly, that is what they will do. These are all common instances of mental health that fly under the radar.
ASMR for contact and comfort.
Stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response or a tingling feeling behind your ears, on your neck and along the spinal area induced by receiving tender personal attention or listening to softly spoken or whispered voices and a few more. Given the current earnings of famous youtube channel GentleWhispering amount to 130,000$ per year, ASMR videos are extremely popular. 80% People are using these videos to get relaxed and fall asleep (source: qz.com). This popularity can be accredited to the lack of intimacy in the daily lives of people in recent times. More about ASMR. Google Insights on ASMR.
On the internet, we reward people terribly.
Cheering and applause can make people do the most heinous tasks without guilt. Thus a lot of people end up getting a lot of attention in the form of likes and comments and this brings them into the spotlight, which in turn inspires a lot of people to mimic those things whether or not it aligns with their morality. When they don’t get the “reward” for their action it leads to them feeling bad about themselves and questioning their self-worth. More on reward systems.
Don’t deal with panic attacks if you don’t know the right way.
Asking someone to take a deep breath might seem normal but for several people, it is an end goal and not the first step. Laura Khoudari is a beginning strength coach in New York and she explains this beautifully in her article — Why ‘Take a Deep Breath’ Can Be Terrible Advice
| Frontiers for Familiarization
There are two facets to this…
- Design for adult lifestyles
- Designing formative structures for children.
Adult Lifestyle stresses
Panic and stress disorders are commonplace at work. Additional introduction of stress at work with touchpoints like lift malfunctions, steep staircases with sharp edges, from chairs to even the lack of communication about salary delays or inadequate salary. These are all stress factors at work, additionally, parenthood comes with its own stress and uncertainty, students have the stress of the uncertainty about their future.
Stress and fears in children
Claustrophobia (fear of closed spaces even if safe.).Cynophobia (fear of dogs) Nyctophobia (fear of darkness and the ambiguity it comes with even in safe environments) All these fears are harboured in the minds of children through the constant messages and media showing fictional representations of what might lie beyond what we can see. Claustrophobia can be instinctive but extremely counterproductive and horrible for children public transportation and school mobility forcing parents to resort to private transportation means even when it proves to be a significant burden on their pockets.
Uncertainty, Anxiety’s Best Friend.
The idea I present for a decrease in work and life stress is the reduction of uncertainty and where that is of extreme difficulty, familiarity with uncertainty helps in stress minimization.
Thus, design to facilitate uncertainty reduction and familiarization where necessary instead of shelter from areas outside the comfort zone of people helps build a system with significantly less stress and anxiety.
Design for cognitive strength
- Creating frameworks to conquer feared environments.
- Devices like wearables and monitors to eliminate uncertainty.
- Clear Communication of changes
- Data visualisations for perspective
- Creation of positive recall experiences
- Introduction to spirituality
- Using humour to normalize situations
- Utilizing Neuroplasticity models
Stay tuned! more Articles to come about the application of this thought!
Thank you! I’d love to hear any additional solution, statement or idea in relation to this idea, feel free to clap, comment or even criticize. Cheers!
Fkj & Masego — Tadow extremely relaxing music, give it a listen!
Ted Talk — The skill of humor
