Understanding Mental Health Support Needs with Essex County Council

2-week

community

residents

Mental health

focus

2-week

community

residents

Mental health

focus

The challenge

Moving beyond the limitations of traditional interviews

Essex County Council needed to understand how residents cope with their mental health needs, the support services they currently use, and how they navigate the search for additional help. Traditional research often struggles to capture the sensitive, private, and non-linear nature of mental health journeys, so we designed an approach that felt safe and flexible for participants.

Industry

Public sector

Solution

Social research

Format

Two-week community

Participants

16 residents with mental health needs

Methods

Private flexible tasks, lived-experience capture

The approach

Uncovering the day-to-day reality of residents via digital ethnography

We launched a two-week online research community with 16 residents currently living with mental health needs, allowing participants to share lived experiences in their own time and space.

Lived experience capture

We used private, flexible tasks to allow residents to document their day-to-day realities and coping strategies.

Service mapping

Participants shared their experiences with existing services, highlighting both what works and where they encounter barriers to accessing help.

Resident-led insights

By giving residents a safe digital space, we shifted from researchers asking questions to residents telling their own stories.

The result

A foundation for services that meet real needs

The project captured behaviour and needs that have informed ECC's future support strategies. Our senior research partners at the Council noted that they were really happy to have taken this step because they just would not have been able to get this level of insight with an online interview alone, and were really surprised at how creative people had been in sharing their stories. This rich data now serves as a foundation for evolving services to meet the actual needs of Essex residents.