Excerpt: “Designers, researchers, and practitioners in digital mental health have a common goal—helping people in distress find relief and live healthier and emotionally vibrant lives. Creating constructs that truly speak to how an individual subjectively experiences distress can be immensely challenging, with no straightforward answers and limited resources to support individuals in crisis. As a result of colonialism (and its historically propagated power dynamics), the tools and systems that currently exist to address mental distress and illness do not incorporate the diverse ways that people experience distress or support. In this work,...
