Ethical Design in Suicide Prevention

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. 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.