1. iCamp: How might we help people to
understand about Mental Health?
InSTEDD iLab Southeast Asia
February 22, 2018 - Phnom Penh

2. InSTEDD iLab Southeast Asia’s tenth iCamp brought together citizens, patients, university students and mental
health experts together to collaborate on the issue of poor mental health access for Cambodians.

3. This iCamp was a particularly emotional one. During
an iCamp, participants share their experiences. The
men and women in the room shared real stories of
mental health struggles that impacted family
members, friends, and themselves.
The room was part brainstorm, part group therapy, as
people spoke about the difficulties of finding the right
care, of being targeted by judgemental people in their
communities, and of the emotional toll of dealing with
a loved one that was struggling, for example.
One story that was particularly striking involved a
participant telling the story of how it took her family
twenty years to find the right care for her family
member.

4. Nine challenges were raised by participants.
The questions focused on:
● raising public and government awareness
● increasing access to information
● addressing mental health stigmas
● providing healthcare providers with better mental
health resources

5. 1. How might we help people to identify first
symptom and understand about mental illness?
2. How might we help to reduce discrimination to
mental health patient and family?
3. How might we help healthcare providers have
better mental health capacities?
Three challenges were voted on by participants for
further discussing, brainstorming and prototyping.
They were:

6. Analyzing the Three Challenges

7. The participants were divided
into three groups to map out and
brainstorm the problems
associated with the three
selected challenges.
What were the biggest obstacles
and opportunities to help provide
Cambodian people with mental
health services and knowledge?

8. Creating and Validating Potential Prototypes

9. Once the groups brainstormed, debated, and sketched out their prototypes,
they then shared their ideas for comments and suggestions.

10. The Three Design Prototypes

11. 1. How can we help people to identify the first symptoms of mental illness?
To help people to understand symptoms and have a better general understanding about mental illness, the
team believes that a campaign via social media, TV and radio would be effective, and they suggest to produce
video content displaying symptoms, including a checklist of factors to look out for, expert presentations, and to
link to a self-assessment tool with provide referral clinic’s contact number.

12. 2. How can we help reduce discrimination against mental health patients and
their families?
The team believed that education through social media could help inform against prejudice and ignorance. The
idea is similar to the first group; to produce video content to inform the general public about mental health
symptoms to help remove the stigma associated. The team planned to distribute this information via social
media.

13. 3. How can we help healthcare providers improve mental health support?
Finding a healthcare provider in Cambodia with mental health support capacity is difficult at current time.
Some places there is a problem lacks of human resource and funding support to provide service to people. To
help improve the capacity of medical and social workers, the team suggests to build a training program for
focal people in an organization, including curating a selection of mental health experts, selecting materials,
outlining a budget, and setting a training duration. The idea is to create a training program that can be shared
with others to extend the impact of this mental health education which includes monitoring and evaluation on
all participants to make sure they are well understand so that more health centers can provide accurate,
helpful care.

14. At the end of the day, the iCamp resulted in three design prototypes, carefully brainstormed and shared by all
participants. The InSTEDD iLab, along with participating organizations, will continue to work on the development
of these proposed solutions.

15. The tenth iCamp provided a shared and safe experience for all participants. This mental health focused
iCamp encouraged ideas that can benefit an often overlooked portion of society. The goal is to understand
from people directly impacted about their needs, and design prototypes based on what they suggest.

16. To stay updated on iCamp events, visit ilabsea.org.

17. Special thanks to

18. To learn more about
The iLab Southeast Asia
please visit:
www.ilabsoutheastasia.org
/instedd /ilabsea /ilabsea