Graduate designer Rui Sun has created an 'Emotional First Aid Kit' to help de-stigmatize mental illness.
Each of the five pieces included in the kit serve a specific purpose to help comfort in times of mental distress. Sun developed the kit to help people conceptualize the understanding that mental health is just as important as physical health. Sun explains, "What if we treated emotional health equally to psychical health? This kit is designed for very different emotional scenarios."
Included in the Emotional First Aid Kit is a stethoscope designed to help the user tune into their breathing, a padded vest to give people confidence in stressful situations, third eye glasses that help remind the user to look at the world with a different perspective, stress-busting speakers that visualize sound with blue ink, and a breathing mask that emits calming essential oils.
These pieces are on display at the Central Saint Martins graduate exhibition.
Key Themes Behind This Trend
- Mental Health Awareness
- Opportunities for creating products or services that normalize mental health and help people cope with mental distress.
- Multi-functional Kits
- Opportunities for developing kits that address various emotional scenarios and offer different tools for managing mental health.
- Innovative Therapeutic Tools
- Opportunities for designing new tools that integrate technology and therapy to offer more effective and personalized treatments for mental illness.
Where This Applies
- Healthcare
- Opportunities for healthcare providers to expand their services to include mental health and create new resources for mental health awareness.
- Design
- Opportunities for designers to develop products that address mental health needs, and create more inclusive and thoughtful designs.
- Technology
- Opportunities for tech companies to develop new innovations that help people cope with mental illness, like virtual therapy or wearable devices that monitor emotional states.
