My role: Creative Design Lead
Client: St Lukas is a Swedish psychotherapy organization with over 40 clinics all over Sweden. St Lukas develops and supports national initiatives to improve understanding of mental illness and ensure access to quality care.
Problem: Stress, anxiety, and depression are rapidly increasing among teenagers in Sweden. Recent reports show that young people are experiencing problems with anxiety and depression that affects their social life, study results, and relations. St Lukas mainly works with adults that seek care themselves. The Swedish government-funded st Lukas for developing specific solutions to address young people with anxiety and depression.
Solution: An e-health solution for teenagers and their families. A place to easy access therapists, connect with others in the same situation and get information and support about anxiety and depression.
Process
Research: Interviews with stakeholders; teenagers, parents and school personnel to create insights and to understand the current patient journey.
Insights: Teenagers with anxiety and depression tend to isolate themselves and in some cases even stop going to school, wich makes them even more isolated, this can start an downward spiral of anxiety and depression which is very hard to break. The teenager at risk had little or non information and understanding of how anxiety works, how to deal with their feelings and how to find or connect with a caregiver.
We discovered that teenagers who got help in an early stage and gained an understanding of how anxiety works and how to deal with it were not entering the depression spiral. We also discovered that very often the parents of the teenager was under stress as well and could not function as support. The personnel in school was identified as a potential whistleblowers but the teachers usually had little or no understanding themselves about how to handle stress or anxiety.
Opportunity: We identified the school as the natural place to connect with teenagers that was in need of help. We wanted to create a platform for caregivers to naturally connect with teenagers and support them before they got into the depression spiral.
Service description: A screening situation is added to the schedule in school. If the screening shows that the teenager needs support the parents are contacted and an action plan is created together with St Lukas therapeutes, the teen, parents and school. St Lukas offers the teen support both online and live through the app. The school personnel have continuous mentoring support.
