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Project

Strategically juxtaposing verbal and visual framing in order to reduce the stigma that young people experience when seeking psychological help.

About one in five European adolescents has a mental health issue, but many do not seek help. Persuasive communication can help promote help-seeking, but empirical data is of the utmost importance in order to optimize these messages and to avoid negative effects. This project has three large phases. First, we will use creative methods to generate insights into the visual language of school-going young people (between 15 and 20 years old). Next, we will conduct in-depth interviews to study how young people experience help-promoting communications. In the third phase, we will use experimental studies to investigate how we can further optimize this persuasive communication. Specifically, we will examine the strategic use of visualizations that are either complementary to the text, or that are subtly contrasting.
Date:1 Oct 2020 →  30 Sep 2021
Keywords:Mental illness, Mental health care, Verbal and visual framing effects, Treatment stigma, Young people
Disciplines:Media and communication theory, Visual communication, Science and health communication