Introducing our deep dive into the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System

This article describes mental health challenges, a broken mental health system and potential triggers for people facing or supporting others through mental health challenges. 

We encourage anyone who is affected by this article to reach out for support. If you’re unsure where to go or who to reach out to, we recommend reaching out to Lifeline 24/7 crisis helpline 13 11 14 or any one of the following services linked here.

Our research brought us back to remember what people need as they move through the system. While the Commissions’ reports expertly lays out recommendations inspiring digital solutions, we wanted to ensure that all future solutions acknowledge people’s diversity, respect people’s rights and encourage people to explore options available to them.

As systems, product and service designers, it’s important to always remember that all experience is subjective, and no two people might experience the same event in the same way. So we decided to take a step back from the ‘data dashboard’ to instead look at how we think about people’s perceptions of data and how it is used across the Mental health care sector.

Listening to and learning from the personal stories and case studies documented by the Commission, we chose to focus on people who support others through mental health challenges. People who are not medical professionals and are unlikely to be familiar with mental health care services. We refer to these people as ‘supporters’ throughout the article.

If you’d like to see how our concepts bring these ideas to life, keep an eye out for our next articles, which will unpack our two concepts:

• Exploring mental health conversations about support and consent.
• Digital tools mediating face to face conversations about how to support people through mental health challenges. 
  

We want to acknowledge that a tremendous amount of knowledge and effort is and will be directed towards realising recommendations from the Commission. It’s important that our work helps to build up, shape and guide the work of other designers, researchers and technologists working in the mental health sector. Our initial work here should be used as a launch point for anyone working in the sector. 

It is important to us that each concept puts people’s needs first, and technology acts in service of their needs and experiences.

For us, diving in to understand outcomes from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System felt like the right thing to do. Our understanding is that there is a long road ahead to realise all 65 recommendations. However, whatever is built, decided or developed next should always remember that technology is in the service of people. As a byproduct of this, we really want to see, and strongly recommend, anyone working through the recommendations to carry the following insights as a starting place when considering their project or brief: 

• To co-design with communities, industry experts and people with lived experiences.
• To develop, test and reiterate on ideas with the people who will use the systems and services you are redesigning.
• Remember that technology isn’t a solution, it’s in service to the people who interact with it.
• Put people up-front and policy in the back.

This research is continuing at Portable and we’ll be looking to further expand on our initial concepts outlined above over the next 18 months, through sprints, workshops and community engagement, much of which we hope to publish and share with the sector. 

This article is part of a series. Check out our other upcoming articles to see where our research into the Commission takes us next, they will be released over the coming months.

If any of our work resonates directly or discreetly with work you or your organisation is addressing, we would be happy to connect, share insights and continue working on these important topics. You can find us at hello@portable.com.au