Thursday, 31 January 2008
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Other Examples of Design Tackling Social / Health Issue
Got some examples of amazing advertising Campaign:
Incredibly effective advertising for blood donations. Definitely memorable.
MIRA and the Refugee and Immigrant Safety and Empowerment Program of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health have launched a public awareness campaign about domestic violence, to inform immigrant communities across the Commonwealth.
Ads Fighting Violence
Those women aren’t sliencing themselves.
This very compelling ambient campaign for the National Council Against Smoking was created by Lowe Bull, Johannesburg and won a 2007 Cannes Lion.
Guerrilla campaign tells smokers to take it outside
To increase awareness of second-hand smoke and to encourage smokers not to smoke indoors, Brussels ad agency LG&F created flyers that, when rolled up, looked like cigarettes.
The copy on the flyers, which strikes the kind of balance between scary information and restraint that smokers might actually respond to, read:
"By taking tour cigarette out the door, you'll save lives. Maybe not your own (although fresh air has never harmed anyone) but the life of your partner. Or your children's.
Every year, 2,000 people die of second-hand smoke in Belgium alone. Many of them have not yet reached adulthood. It's sad, but true, the majority of passive smoking victims are children. Pneumonia, cancer or other respiratory illnesses hit the weaker ones first. Think about it when you're in doubt of taking your smoke outside. The lungs of your loved ones deserve better."
Design against Smoking (NHS)
Guerilla advertising design against smoking in US
Guerilla advertising design on homelessness supporting
Incredibly effective advertising for blood donations. Definitely memorable.
The Soviet government produced quite a lot of propaganda posters in its day. Some of the more interesting, and still relevant, posters were against alcohol abuse. Yuri Matrosovich has put together a small “Museum of Anti-Alcohol Posters” featuring some great examples of anti-alcohol propaganda.
MIRA and the Refugee and Immigrant Safety and Empowerment Program of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health have launched a public awareness campaign about domestic violence, to inform immigrant communities across the Commonwealth.
Ads Fighting Violence
Those women aren’t sliencing themselves.
Saturday, 26 January 2008
A Example of Suicide Prevention Project of 'Choose Life'
STRICT EMBARGO: 10.15hrs, Monday 10 September 2007
*NOT FOR ADVANCED PUBLICATION OR BROADCAST*
MORE THAN 700 REASONS TO SHATTER THE SILENCE AROUND SUICIDE
The Proclaimers Pledge to Support Suicide Prevention Week
Suicide claimed more than 700 lives in Scotland last year. Scotland’s silent killer still leaves a trail of devastation and often remains a hidden issue that people are scared to talk about. To mark Suicide Prevention Week (10-16th September 2007), Choose Life, Scotland’s national strategy to prevent suicide, is shattering the silence around suicide by unveiling a bold artwork that aims to bring suicide firmly into the open and highlight that “talking and listening can save lives”.
Featuring the faces of nearly 500 people from all over Scotland the large scale 20 x 10 feet collage spells out the word ‘SUICIDE’, which was unveiled to the public today by Charlie and Craig Reid of the Proclaimers and Shona Robison, Minister for Public Health.
The sea of faces includes people from all walks of life, as well as The Proclaimers, radio presenters, the First Minister, Deputy First Minister, Minister for Public Health and other politicians and personalities, who are all helping to lead the way in encouraging people to talk more openly about their feelings and make time to listen to others.
Lifting the lid on our emotions can help prevent everyday problems overwhelming us and help build our resilience for coping with difficult and challenging times and events in our lives. The image therefore sends out a clear message of hope, demonstrating that Scots are uniting in their support of suicide prevention.
Shona Robison, Scotland’s first Minister for Public Health said:
“Helping people break the silence to talk about suicide and its prevention is vital for Scotland’s overall health and wellbeing. Although the figures since 2000 suggest there may be a downward trend emerging, each and every suicide is a tragedy. We know that in many cases suicide can be prevented if people get the right help and support to see a way out of their situation. That is why it is so important to talk about our own feelings and the difficulties we face, and also to listen to others, not just this week during Suicide Prevention Week but at all times”.
Caroline Farquhar, Head of Implementation at Choose Life, added “There is a myth that talking about suicide and its prevention makes the problem worse, not better, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Being open and honest about our feelings, including those around suicide, and having people to listen without judging can actually save lives.
We see the collage as a work in progress; a kind of living artwork. Suicide prevention is everyone’s business and we want many more people in Scotland to submit their photographs and pledge their support. With every picture we receive, the collage will grow and suicide will become less of a taboo.”
Charlie and Craig Reid said:
“We are supporting Suicide Prevention Week 2007 because the work being done by Choose Life is of vital importance to individuals and families throughout the country. Talking about the subject of suicide is one of life’s great taboos. We believe the courageous work of Choose Life and its modern approach will save lives”.
People around Scotland will be able to see the artwork this week as the collage tours the country on a travelling billboard, driving home the message that talking and listening can save lives. The tour will visit East Renfrewshire, Greenock Midlothian, Wishaw, Kirkintilloch, Helensburgh, Paisley, Aberdeen, Angus, Dundee and Edinburgh. The collage will then return to Artworks, a community arts project based in Glasgow for people from homeless or disadvantaged backgrounds, where it was created and where additional photographs will be added as they arrive.
Further information on suicide prevention, including how to strike up difficult conversations, top tips for effective listening and details on how to sign up to the ‘Talk. Listen. Save Lives’ pledge can be found on the Choose Life website: www.chooselife.net/spw
Choose Life also offers training to anyone wanting to learn more about how to spot the risk of suicide and signpost people to the right help and support. For information about training opportunities or for further information and resources, visit http://www.chooselife.net/
If you need to talk about your feelings you can contact one of the following:
§ Samaritans : 08457 90 90 90; www.samaritans.org
§ Breathing Space on 0800 83 85 57 (6pm-2am); http://www.breathingspacescotland.co.uk/ .
§ Living Life to the Full: http://www.livinglifetothefull.com/ offers free online support and information about life skills which can help tackle life’s difficulties.
Friday, 25 January 2008
Alcohol, Drugs, Self-harm, Attention Seeking, Parasuicide and Suicide
Dringk and drugs
Many people (especialy teens) use drink or drugs to help them forget about their problems. However, alcohol and drugs can make depression worse and affect a person's ability to think straight. One young person in every three who commits suicide is drunk or on drugs.
Parasuicide
Parasuicide is when people make a suicide attempt, but do not actually want to kill themselves. It is sometimes called deliberate self-harm. Usually, they take an overdose and then call a friend or the emergency services. Or they may carry out the act in a place where they hope to be found and helped. Sadly, this does not always happen. Help may not arrive until it is too late.
Parasuicide is not the same as when people delebertely harm themselves in less serious ways. For example, some people may cut themselves when they feel very stressed or upset. This is not life-threatening, and they do it because the pain somehow helps them.
A call for help
Parasuicide is usually a 'cry for help' from people, usually girls, who have trouble coping with their problems. They suffer from the same kind of difficulties as those who actually do commit suicide. They may feel it is the only way to make the people around them understand how bad, or how angry they are feeling. SOme teenagers commit parasuicide because they want to frighten someone who has upset them and 'make them sorry'. This is very dangerous because some parasuicides end in death.
Parasuicide also shows how confused many people are. They may want to take drastic action or even kill themselves, but often change their minds quite quickly. Few people are 100 per cent certain that they want to die. Even when they feel at their worst, there is nearly always a part of them that clings to life.
People who commit parasuicide may be told they are attention-seekers or time-wasters. Their families may be very angry and upset, making the person feel even more miserable and guilty. However, people who have committed parasuicide should be taken seriously. They are likely to try it again, and are up to twenty times, more likely than the general population to finally take their own lives.
Reference
Claire Wallerstein (2004) Need to Know Teenage Suicide. United Kingdom, Roger Coote Publishing. p. 18, p. 27
Many people (especialy teens) use drink or drugs to help them forget about their problems. However, alcohol and drugs can make depression worse and affect a person's ability to think straight. One young person in every three who commits suicide is drunk or on drugs.
Parasuicide
Parasuicide is when people make a suicide attempt, but do not actually want to kill themselves. It is sometimes called deliberate self-harm. Usually, they take an overdose and then call a friend or the emergency services. Or they may carry out the act in a place where they hope to be found and helped. Sadly, this does not always happen. Help may not arrive until it is too late.
Parasuicide is not the same as when people delebertely harm themselves in less serious ways. For example, some people may cut themselves when they feel very stressed or upset. This is not life-threatening, and they do it because the pain somehow helps them.
A call for help
Parasuicide is usually a 'cry for help' from people, usually girls, who have trouble coping with their problems. They suffer from the same kind of difficulties as those who actually do commit suicide. They may feel it is the only way to make the people around them understand how bad, or how angry they are feeling. SOme teenagers commit parasuicide because they want to frighten someone who has upset them and 'make them sorry'. This is very dangerous because some parasuicides end in death.
Parasuicide also shows how confused many people are. They may want to take drastic action or even kill themselves, but often change their minds quite quickly. Few people are 100 per cent certain that they want to die. Even when they feel at their worst, there is nearly always a part of them that clings to life.
People who commit parasuicide may be told they are attention-seekers or time-wasters. Their families may be very angry and upset, making the person feel even more miserable and guilty. However, people who have committed parasuicide should be taken seriously. They are likely to try it again, and are up to twenty times, more likely than the general population to finally take their own lives.
Reference
Claire Wallerstein (2004) Need to Know Teenage Suicide. United Kingdom, Roger Coote Publishing. p. 18, p. 27
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Development of My Initial Idea
I'm thinking to find a solution to encourage more suicidal people to ask for help from professional counselling organisations. I came out a question, as a counselling organisation, how to promote its service from passive to active, I mean how to find out will-be clients (suicidal people) actively instead of waiting someone who wants to gain helps come to ask passively.
There are two points can be developed, one is from the angel of suicidal people--- influential design which might be change suicidal people's mind and push them to ask professional helps instead of solving problems by themselves until they commit suicide.
The other point is the counselling itself. Design a method or a service which might help professional counselors to find out who is suicidal or who need help.
Integrate my initial idea (increase suicidal people's fear of death and get rid of any would-be suicide equipments) and these two new ideas together, I developed an idea which is to build up a systematic service system for counselling organisations.
Suicide people would like to choose a way which quick and less painful to kill themselves, and what they are afraid is failed suicide, because if they alive from a failed suicide, their living condition will be more miserable than before, for they suffered the pain and might be will suffer disable or other sequela in the rest of life. So if I design a information on/in most popular suicide tools and suicide places to tell suicidal people how terrible if they kill themselves by using such tools/methods and show the failed suicide figures/percentage which caused by using such equipment, and the results after a failed suicide, as well as illustrations/photos which show the scary picture after a suicide/failed suicide, then people might be hesitate to use the tool/methods which they think is perfect for suicide before, so they might be give up (such as the way of coal gas) or seek to other ways to commit suicide, but as same as the former one, such information is on other tools as well. So at this moment suicidal people might be hesitate to kill themselves because they don't want to suffer greater psychological and physical pains if they fail to die, even it just happened in a very few cases, but they don't want take the risk.
Meanwhile, the helping line number and website address is also on the equipments and the billboard, in order to give people chance to ask for help immediate when they hesitate, desperate and confused. If possible (I mean if this idea is accessible) the councelling organization will arrange a couple of well-trained professionals in the hotspots such as bridge, cliff, the top of architectures, shelves in shop/supermarket/pharmacy which selling would-be suicide tools/equipments to seek and observe who is suicidal and talk to them actively in order to persuade suicidal people to accept the professional guide and therapy.
Evidences of my idea (examples of failed suicide afterwards):
"Experts believe that for every suicide there may be up to 100 failed attempts. However, people who have survived a suicide attempt will not necessarily walk away unharmed. One of the biggest problems is with tylenol/paracetamol. More than 50 per cent of young women who attempt suicide do so by taking an overdose of these painkillers. They often do not know that the drug takes four hours to be absorbed by their body.
If they get to hospital quickly, doctors may make them eat a mix of gooey black charcoal to remove the poison. Unlike in the movies, stomach pumping, in which a hose is forced into the stomach and the contents sucked out, is rare. Not only painful, it can also cause death through stomach acid getting into the lungs.
If the overdose took place much more than four hours before, patients are hooked up to an intravenous drip for 32 hours, to help flush out the poison. They will later need specialist treatment. Tylenol/paracetamol is toxic to the liver so they may even need a liver transplant.
Without enough transplant organs to go around, a suicide attempter may be less likely to get one than a person with liver disease. This means a certain number of people will die within a month of taking the overdose.
Another less common problem is permanent paralysis - loss of the ability to move or feel. Thins can happen to people who have survived jumping from tall buildings or deliberately crashing cars. Some people have even survived after shooting themselves in the head. They usually have brain damage, or partial paralysis like someone who has suffered a stroke. Their faces are usually disfigured or destroyed."
(Claire Wallerstien, 2004, pp. 34-35)
Bibiolography
Claire Wallerstien, (2004) Need to Know Teenage Suicide. United Kingdom: Roger Coote Publish
There are two points can be developed, one is from the angel of suicidal people--- influential design which might be change suicidal people's mind and push them to ask professional helps instead of solving problems by themselves until they commit suicide.
The other point is the counselling itself. Design a method or a service which might help professional counselors to find out who is suicidal or who need help.
Integrate my initial idea (increase suicidal people's fear of death and get rid of any would-be suicide equipments) and these two new ideas together, I developed an idea which is to build up a systematic service system for counselling organisations.
Suicide people would like to choose a way which quick and less painful to kill themselves, and what they are afraid is failed suicide, because if they alive from a failed suicide, their living condition will be more miserable than before, for they suffered the pain and might be will suffer disable or other sequela in the rest of life. So if I design a information on/in most popular suicide tools and suicide places to tell suicidal people how terrible if they kill themselves by using such tools/methods and show the failed suicide figures/percentage which caused by using such equipment, and the results after a failed suicide, as well as illustrations/photos which show the scary picture after a suicide/failed suicide, then people might be hesitate to use the tool/methods which they think is perfect for suicide before, so they might be give up (such as the way of coal gas) or seek to other ways to commit suicide, but as same as the former one, such information is on other tools as well. So at this moment suicidal people might be hesitate to kill themselves because they don't want to suffer greater psychological and physical pains if they fail to die, even it just happened in a very few cases, but they don't want take the risk.
Meanwhile, the helping line number and website address is also on the equipments and the billboard, in order to give people chance to ask for help immediate when they hesitate, desperate and confused. If possible (I mean if this idea is accessible) the councelling organization will arrange a couple of well-trained professionals in the hotspots such as bridge, cliff, the top of architectures, shelves in shop/supermarket/pharmacy which selling would-be suicide tools/equipments to seek and observe who is suicidal and talk to them actively in order to persuade suicidal people to accept the professional guide and therapy.
Evidences of my idea (examples of failed suicide afterwards):
"Experts believe that for every suicide there may be up to 100 failed attempts. However, people who have survived a suicide attempt will not necessarily walk away unharmed. One of the biggest problems is with tylenol/paracetamol. More than 50 per cent of young women who attempt suicide do so by taking an overdose of these painkillers. They often do not know that the drug takes four hours to be absorbed by their body.
If they get to hospital quickly, doctors may make them eat a mix of gooey black charcoal to remove the poison. Unlike in the movies, stomach pumping, in which a hose is forced into the stomach and the contents sucked out, is rare. Not only painful, it can also cause death through stomach acid getting into the lungs.
If the overdose took place much more than four hours before, patients are hooked up to an intravenous drip for 32 hours, to help flush out the poison. They will later need specialist treatment. Tylenol/paracetamol is toxic to the liver so they may even need a liver transplant.
Without enough transplant organs to go around, a suicide attempter may be less likely to get one than a person with liver disease. This means a certain number of people will die within a month of taking the overdose.
Another less common problem is permanent paralysis - loss of the ability to move or feel. Thins can happen to people who have survived jumping from tall buildings or deliberately crashing cars. Some people have even survived after shooting themselves in the head. They usually have brain damage, or partial paralysis like someone who has suffered a stroke. Their faces are usually disfigured or destroyed."
(Claire Wallerstien, 2004, pp. 34-35)
Bibiolography
Claire Wallerstien, (2004) Need to Know Teenage Suicide. United Kingdom: Roger Coote Publish
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
suicideTALK
I attended the 'suicideTALK' training course today, and got some useful information from this class.
By talking with the total 20 attendees (except me) in the class, I found that almost all the people are studying in medicine or psychology in University of Dundee, and they came to the class not because they are interested in how to help suicidal people, because as a medicine or a psychology student, the major required them to have some knowledge about how to deal with suicidal people, they said: "actually I have no idea about what I'm gonna to do/say if someone tell me they want to kill themselves." So I asked them: "how about if you want to commit suicide but not sure if it is a reasonable choice, so you feel that you need someone to help you on your confusion. If in this situation, will you tell your best friend you want to commit suicide?" The answer is surprising, almost all the people said they won't tell others around, even counselors, one medicine student said: "no, I won't tell anyone I want to kill myself, even professional councelling, cuz I know people don't know what they can do for me, just like us, we don't know what we should do for the suicidal people either, and we perhaps feel like the person who want to commit suicide might be have something wrong with them, I mean mentally or psychiatrically." The answer drove me to think about the meaning of counselling. Although there are many organisations around to help suicidal people, as well as such kind of course which training people how to deal with suicidal people, how many suicidal people would like to tell others or tell professional counselors to get supports and help from them? I think the professional counselling are very passive, so I wonder how the organisations encourage more suicidal people to ask for help if there only a few people would like to seek for their aids. So this point might be my breakthrough to come up my ideas.
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Suicide Statistics in Scotland from 1982-2001
NUMBER OF SUICIDES OVER LAST 20 YEARS
This graph breaks down completed male suicides and undetermined deaths in Scotland from 1982 to 2001 by age group.
From the above graph, I can easily identify that the male whose age between 15-34 are slightly higher than the age group betweent 35-54, but dramatically higher than the age group 55-74. So young males are main group of suicide in Scotland.
This graph breaks down completed female suicides and undetermined deaths in Scotland from 1982 to 2001 by age group.
From this graph, I can see the suicide rate has not huge difference between the three age groups in famale suicide.
Note: The figures above include deaths from international self-harm (suicides) and events of undetermined intent (undetermined deaths). It is believed that the majority of undetermined deaths are hidden suicides (though this is less likely to be the case for the small numbers of cases aged under 15 - not shown here).
INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF TOTAL SUICIDE RATES
This graph shows male and female international comparisons for suicide rates using the last available figures from the World Health Organization for each country.
The male suicide in the Europe is universally much higher than famale suicide.
PERCENTAGE OF SUICIDES (MALE AND FEMALE) WITH A PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY, OVER LAST 11 YEARS
This graph shows the percentage of suicides in Scotland comparing male, female and both, who have a psychiatric history since 1990.
But males who have psychiatric history tend to kill themselves in a low percentage.
This graph shows the number of admissions to/discharges from hospital in Scotland resulting from episodes of self-harm.
About 3% of those admitted to hospital after deliberate self-harm die by suicide within 5-10 years of initial admission.
1% die by suicide or undetermined cause within a year after admission.
Compare with male, obviously famales tend to commit self harm rather than commit a suicide.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2002/12/15873/14474
This graph breaks down completed male suicides and undetermined deaths in Scotland from 1982 to 2001 by age group.
From the above graph, I can easily identify that the male whose age between 15-34 are slightly higher than the age group betweent 35-54, but dramatically higher than the age group 55-74. So young males are main group of suicide in Scotland.
This graph breaks down completed female suicides and undetermined deaths in Scotland from 1982 to 2001 by age group.
From this graph, I can see the suicide rate has not huge difference between the three age groups in famale suicide.
Note: The figures above include deaths from international self-harm (suicides) and events of undetermined intent (undetermined deaths). It is believed that the majority of undetermined deaths are hidden suicides (though this is less likely to be the case for the small numbers of cases aged under 15 - not shown here).
INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF TOTAL SUICIDE RATES
This graph shows male and female international comparisons for suicide rates using the last available figures from the World Health Organization for each country.
The male suicide in the Europe is universally much higher than famale suicide.
PERCENTAGE OF SUICIDES (MALE AND FEMALE) WITH A PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY, OVER LAST 11 YEARS
This graph shows the percentage of suicides in Scotland comparing male, female and both, who have a psychiatric history since 1990.
But males who have psychiatric history tend to kill themselves in a low percentage.
This graph shows the number of admissions to/discharges from hospital in Scotland resulting from episodes of self-harm.
About 3% of those admitted to hospital after deliberate self-harm die by suicide within 5-10 years of initial admission.
1% die by suicide or undetermined cause within a year after admission.
Compare with male, obviously famales tend to commit self harm rather than commit a suicide.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2002/12/15873/14474
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