Baby Blues: The Bad Mind (360G-Wellcome-202732_Z_16_Z)

The project will innovatively utilise an Arts Clinic approach to explore and creatively document how post-natal depression and mental health issues impact on black British women of African-Caribbean heritage. It will be specific in its attempts to the targeting and recruitment of its cohort and participants from Birmingham inner city neighbourhoods: - Aston, Handsworth, Lozells, and Perry Barr. Project objectives will be evidencing of outreach work on public health and mental health topics undertaken by project staff, practitioners and researchers, action learning focus groups, plenary discussions/workshops, and utilising both social media web-blogs and web-feeds. The project will support public engagement with biomedical and health related research using academic and public engagement advisors to underpin public health topics, methodology and ethics. Integral to this will be how Arts Clinics captures emotions from participants, and is senstively used for evidencing of real life mental health and post-natal experiences and having this ethically communicated. E.g. using the performing arts to highlight social inter-actions arrived at from consultations and feedback generated from 'Question & Answers' sessions with women - (some that live/are affected by post-natal stress, others with sensitive cognitive behaviour issues impacting within their family/ social environment(s) and in personal relationships).