Ethical Design in Suicide Prevention

Background: This collaborative project between RMIT communication design lecturer Dr Nicola St John and the #chatsafe team at Orygen youth mental health explores how to safety and carefully co-design suicide prevention and self-care campaigns with communication design students. While most co-design approaches around mental health actively involve participants, very few involve young people or suicide content, while none have reported on engaging design students in the process. Contribution: Our research was selected as an NGV offering at Melbourne Design Week—Ethical design in suicide prevention—curated and produced by Dr Nicola St John, Portable Digital Producer Olivia Gregory, and Orygen researcher Dr Louise La Sala. Alongside an exhibition of students’ campaign outcomes and co-design research insights, a panel discussion highlighted how young people, researchers, and industry can work collectively to navigate sensitive and often taboo topics—prompting new thinking around engaging and trusting design students in co-design practices. Opened by the Hon Greg Hunt, Minister for Health, panellists brought together leading researchers in youth suicide prevention (Prof Jo Robinson – Orygen), RMIT comm design students, design lecturers (Dr St John) and industry professionals (Celia Delaney – Portable) to contribute new perspectives about collaboratively co-designing safe online spaces and developing design processes of care around representing mental health and suicide. Significance: This work is the first in a developing partnership and body of research documenting key elements of the co-design process when dealing with complex and sensitive subject matter with young people, while prioritising safety and selfcare within communication design education. It contributes to the world’s first suicide prevention campaign co-designed in partnership with young people (Thorn et al. 2020).