Mariliis Öeren

Mariliis is the Chief Scientific Officer at Method X Studios, a company focused on democratising good mental health and ending the mental health poverty gap. She holds a PhD in Behavioural Science from the University of Cambridge and has been involved in the development and assessment of a variety of risk behaviour prevention interventions.

Designing digital solutions to improve mental health in left behind populations

People from lower socio-economic groups are more likely to suffer poorer mental health. At the same time, mental health services are struggling to cope with demands on services, and unequal access to support is further exacerbating health inequalities. Additionally, people with higher education and higher socio-economic background who have good access to resources (e.g., time, income, knowledge) are more likely to use commercial mental health solutions in the market to invest in their self-care.

Digital products are therefore designed and marketed to these people. So, it is lamentable that while we have the ability to scale digital tools and solutions, the people who are most in need and are least able to access them are not benefitting from the digital mental health boom.

Our goal at Method X Studios is to democratise mental health information and start this conversation, both in the world of consumer mental health and across tech because of this awareness that there are left behind populations, who are not benefitting from existing solutions as products are designed for those who are designing them. When we built our first product, a breakfast show app Wakey, we carried out research to get a better understanding of the impact the product had on people from left behind populations.

While we saw that users reported improved mental well-being and we reached people from lower socio-economic groups, our retention dropped after 21 days, and qualitative results suggested we did not manage to reach people from minority ethnic groups with our product fit.