Did you know, that if a parent deals with depression, the child has a higher risk of getting depression as well? If both parents are affected, the risk rises up to 50 percent.
But you can decrease that risk and strengthen the resilience of children by talking to your children about the illness and explaining it to them. But how do you start? Which words should you use, to not frighten your loved ones?
This is how I came up with ANIMA (latin for "Soul", "Breath" and "Wind"). For my master thesis I wanted to create a child-friendly approch to explaining mental illnesses.
ANIMA is a wooden puzzle combined with a booklet, that contains guidelines to child-appropriate education on depression. The thought behind it is, that parents (or other caregivers or psychologists) sit down with the children, take the time to do the puzzle in a calm environment and alongside educate about the mental illness. The guidelines were created together with psychologists to ensure the quality and the correctness of the information. The puzzle was designed in an itterative approach, tested regularly together with families and improved during the process. The Slogan "Verbindungen schaffen" ("creating connection") reflects the connections created by putting the puzzle pieces together, as well as the bond that is created between the family members.
In the future, I hope to be able to adapt ANIMA to other mental illnesses as well, such as anxiety, phobias, PTBS and eating disorders.
ANIMA is nominated for the cologne design price 2025.
Feedback:
You want to test ANIMA for your family or you are a psychologist or social worker interested in using it for your work? Please send me an E-Mail with your contact information. I'll gladly set you up with a prototype of ANIMA and would love to get some Feedback from you in exchange to further improve the product.