"It was Empowering": Care Pathways a Novel Culturally Informed Inspiration Card Game for Community-Engaged Co-Design with Black American Women and Clinicians

Abstract

Anxiety and depression are the most common mental health conditions among Black American women. Despite the prevalence of these mental health conditions, gendered racial/ethnic treatment disparities persist. Culturally responsive digital mental health applications represent one promising path for expanding access to evidence-based mental health care. However, Black American women are underrepresented in the design and development of digital mental health applications. In this work, we report preliminary findings from four co-design workshops with seven Black women with a history of anxiety and/or depression and seven mental health professionals. We share with the community our novel inspiration card game—Care Pathways—used to engage participants in the co-design of a digital mental health application that leverages culturally responsive Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. Our findings examine how Care Pathways sparked meaningful and rich design insights while supporting two sets of experts, Women with lived experience and mental health professionals, in co-designing together.