5 Whys to Mental Health Issue in Cities

Following our decision in exploring mental health issue city dwellers face, we wanted to dig deep and uncover the main reasons of mental health. To do so, we used the exercise of 5 Whys from the "Design. Think. Make. Break. Repeat" book.

We chose "Why is mental health an issue in cities?" as a problem statement for this exercise. Each one of us took 3 minutes to think about why this situation exists and note it down. We then repeated this four more times and, so, each one of us come up with 5 root causes of mental health issue in cities.

Following these five rounds, we then shared our ideas with the rest of the group and explained what we meant in a little more detail. Finally, we grouped similar reasons together and categorised them under broader subjects. See the photo below for the subjects we came up with: overstimulation, environment, safety&security, biological and social networks.

Grouping not only helped us put our ideas in order but also gave us insight about where we mostly focused on. See the document here to read all of the reasons we came up with and the categories we grouped them under. https://docs.google.com/document/d/13joEIDvR8BGmNT-IKa1hqpQrxE6R5-VRIlUmDR-kzK4/edit?usp=sharing

This activity helped us not only understand the mental health issue in smart cities better but also come up with the problem statement we want to explore and solve, which will help us in our ideation process next.