Image courtesy of Chris O’Sullivan

This is a guest post by Mark Brown of One in Four on his experience as an Innovator at last week’s first Innovation Lab. Mark is a prolific, vocal and valued UK Mental Health commentator via One in Four magazine and social media conversation. 

“If I said to you ‘I spent last Saturday in an innovation lab’ what would you picture? Would you imagine me in a white coat with goggles on, surrounded by bleeping machines and burbling test tubes in an underground research establishment hidden somewhere behind chain link fences? If I told you it was a mental health innovation lab, would you add lots of electrodes attached to heads and lots of machines scratching out brainwaves on rolls of paper? [Read more...]

Chris O’Sullivan from the Mental Health Foundation gives us his personal reflections from the UK’s first mental health Innovation Lab.

Today I’ve had the massive privilege of working at an Innovation Lab in central London, with fifty or so of the most innovative people I’ ve met in years. The chance to combine innovation, technology, and mental health is never something I can resist. The opportunity to work with a mix of outstanding, articulate, exceptional and gifted young people and a range of tech people, problem solvers, and facilitators was proper humbling.

This story starts back in April, [Read more...]

It’s the end of the day! Lined up in front of me are some volunteers from each group, ready to present the ideas they have come up with today. Here are just three of our bright ideas for apps.

1) “How We Say It” – an app that functions as a language guide for professionals. This would include the vocabulary that young people who are transgendered say they find acceptable, and the history and usage of such words.

2) ‘Five Steps” – an app which lets [Read more...]

Rob Bell, from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, offers his thoughts on why we’re running the Labs project

This is an unusual place for me to be on a Saturday. Normally around this time I’d be playing in a park somewhere with my two boys, having fun, not a care in the world.

The oldest is 4 years old and his brother has just turned 1 – according to the oldest, the little one is now officially “a number”. Both have fine mental health…I think. I hope they will always feel they can talk to me about the things going on in their lives, their hopes and fears. [Read more...]