Contextualizing Mental Health Resources

Contextualizing Mental Health Resources for Queer, Trans, and BIPOC Experiences

@University of Washington, Information School

This is a student-led project under my Design Methods class. My responsibilities' high-level objective is foundational in situating the context of the Users, unmet needs, and their problems before creating our intervention.

Background and Goals

Context

Transitioning into Graduate School (at the Master's level) is met with many motivations, desires, and goals. A commonality my team and I face as graduate students are our challenges with mental health and our struggles to find/use resources.

Research Goals

Define our problem space, including LGBTQ+ and BIPOC graduate students.
Understand mental health conceptualizations at the personal and institutional levels.
Iterate on a possible project scope applied to systems thinking.
Use our research to inform our possible design intervention.

Desk & Exploratory Research

Current Findings

Graduate Students display anxiety levels nearly six times higher than the general population (Pain 2018).
Nearly a third of graduate students in the US report their mental health status to university-based programs (Pain 2018).
Comparing the student-body population...
- 60% of students are pursuing their Bachelor's
- 10% are pursuing a Master's or Ph.D. (Eisenberg 2020: 4).
Queer, Trans, and People of Color students have difficulties finding support because the teaching faculty comprises cis-White and heterosexual staff (Matias et al. 2021).

The Team's Autoethnographic Positions

We feel burdened to reach out and find mental health resources.
Intergenerational trauma forces us to "deal with it" and progress forward.
We feel like we can't reach out because we're unable to find those with similar experiences.

Our Defined Research Questions

1. Under what conditions prohibit Graduate Students from reaching out to professional mental health resources, especially during a crisis?

2. How are students "dealing with it" and defining resilience especially among their academic programs?

3. How might we evaluate current mental health resources and their abilities to help or support LGBTQ+ or BIPOC Graduate Students?

Conducting Contextual Inquires

Current Findings

Graduate Students display anxiety levels nearly six times higher than the general population (Pain 2018).
Nearly a third of graduate students in the US report their mental health status to university-based programs (Pain 2018).
Comparing the student-body population...
- 60% of students are pursuing their Bachelor's
- 10% are pursuing a Master's or Ph.D. (Eisenberg 2020: 4).
Queer, Trans, and People of Color students have difficulties finding support because the teaching faculty comprises cis-White and heterosexual staff (Matias et al. 2021).

Our Purpose and Participant Screeners

Purpose

With Graduate Students having different educational experiences, they must have different mental health experiences. A contextual inquiry helps to understand how students practice their mental health in their contexts.

Our team conducted a total of three contextual inquiries, resulting in an hour each (50 minutes for the inquiry and 10 minutes for questions).

Participant Screener

Participant must be a Graduate Student (Master's or PhD)
They must identify in, or as, BIPOC or LGBTQ+ or both
The participant must be considered a full-time Graduate Student
- Taking 10+- grad-level major-specific credits
They must reside in the city of Seattle or the University of Washington.

Key Learnings

Contextual Inquiry Key Learnings

Graduate Students rely on people such as friends, family, or classmates for support. .
Mental health resources are sometimes used outside the university setting.
Lack of cultural and identity-based visibility in programs leads to feelings of loneliness and reliance on the self.
The need to use university resources is not there because there are too many resources.

The Intervention

Current Findings

Graduate Students display anxiety levels nearly six times higher than the general population (Pain 2018).
Nearly a third of graduate students in the US report their mental health status to university-based programs (Pain 2018).
Comparing the student-body population...
- 60% of students are pursuing their Bachelor's
- 10% are pursuing a Master's or Ph.D. (Eisenberg 2020: 4).
Queer, Trans, and People of Color students have difficulties finding support because the teaching faculty comprises cis-White and heterosexual staff (Matias et al. 2021).

Our Problem

There are disparate ways of accessing and attaining campus-related resources associated with mental health.

Specific Point of Intervention

The University of Washington provides its graduate students with a trove of resources applicable to student life, community, and mental well-being.

However, these resources can be difficult to navigate, as they are not centralized in one place.

Resources have the power to shape and influence change. It's necessary to know which ones could best benefit an individual.

Our point of intervention is to create a space, such as a mobile phone app, to centralize resources that may foster better mental well-being among Queer, Trans, and People of Color Graduate Students by simplifying the process of resource navigation.

Our Systems Diagram

Our point of intervention will focus on the University of Washington's Student Resources.

There are already many resources available. Our intervention would focus on providing a centralized space to use these resources to benefit someone's situation or circumstances.

We are also to focus on the system of managing, recommending, and utilizing the current resources to help with someone's mental health journey.

Concluding Thoughts

Current Findings

Graduate Students display anxiety levels nearly six times higher than the general population (Pain 2018).
Nearly a third of graduate students in the US report their mental health status to university-based programs (Pain 2018).
Comparing the student-body population...
- 60% of students are pursuing their Bachelor's
- 10% are pursuing a Master's or Ph.D. (Eisenberg 2020: 4).
Queer, Trans, and People of Color students have difficulties finding support because the teaching faculty comprises cis-White and heterosexual staff (Matias et al. 2021).

Next Steps

To iterate on the existing systems map to include stakeholder opinions, voices, and perspectives
Utilize community-based participatory research to connect with stakeholders.
- Learn what mental health is at the granular and institutional levels.
Create a mobile-resource mobile application to assist people in getting these resources at any time.

My Reflection

With this being my first project at the grad-school level, I was excited to focus on a UX-Research-specific deliverable. It's necessary to include the stakeholders at all times when learning about the system and intervention. As I advance my career, I am to prioritize stakeholder engagement and always refine my knowledge within a system. Additionally, I am learning how to maintain rapport to create professional relationships and new friendships too!