Throughout the course of this subject mapping has played a major role in documenting our thought process. In our class groups of five we regularly build upon each week of work. This collaborative process helps us think more deeply about the participants in the realm of mental health.
Mental Health word association exercise “Soft and Hard”
The maps below marked the controversies associated with mental health. Much like our previous maps, we have overlapping participants such as health professionals and the sufferers.
Mapping the controversies in Mental health
Personally the mapping exercise that I found most beneficial involved the entire group. All the students focussing on the topic of mental health were brought into one room. Whilst we were initially divided up into our original groups from class to work with, we built on a larger collaborative process. As a group we had come up with one hundred or so words that we associate with mental health. The focus of the exercise was to think without inhibitions and write down the first thing that came to mind. When we had completed this task we had to lay the cards out on the table and view what the other groups had discussed. We had to walk around the room and choose five words that resonated with us deeply in relation to the topic of mental health we were focussing on.
The words I chose were: Voices, Relapse, Eating Disorder, Acceptance and Statistics. These words were particularly resonant because they had adequately described a lot of the personas in the articles I had read during the first few weeks of the subject. I found this exercise particularly informative as we were able to share thoughts of other members in the group. Some of these words and feelings had not been discussed within my class group so it was an eye-opening experience to gain a different perspective.
An example of the word association exercise.
Emergent Practices 
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