Ralf Josef
Engage / Studio Engage
since October 2015
ongoing group project with:
Dan Coppen,
and Hermione Townsend.
Florencia Sepúlveda Camposano,
We have spent a year in New York and Tokyo, researching and designing to address negative attitudes and stigma surrounding mental health. We are currently continuing our research in the U.K. by developing a set of physical prompts and scripted discussion facilitators for the mental health charity SANE and their Black Dog Campaign to use for their workshops.
Stigma and misconceptions about depression are a strong barrier for sufferers to seek help or feel able to discuss their condition with others. We strongly believe that mental health is an important subject for everyone to be able to discuss openly in order to successfully minimize its negative impact on society.
In Tokyo we worked on testing and adapting our concept for the Japanese context. Based on the insights and experiences we learned from our research, we developed the Engage Workshop for university students in Japan, with the objectives of tackling the stigma surrounding mental health and increasing mental health literacy.
We started in Brooklyn, NY, where we focused on elderly depression. We spent time talking to people at a local senior centre and as a result designed the Engage Toolkit, in order to enable dialogue and promote a culture of openness around mental health for senior centre members.
