Interventions for the

worried well.

The ‘Worried Well’ are a group of people particularly anxious about their health, resistant to reassurance and are perceived to be disproportionate users of health services.

Interventions for the Worried Well consists of a family of five annoying but well intentioned objects that aim to stimulate the senses, interrupting negative thought cycles surrounding health. This re-education of anxious minds aims to help users cope with their thoughts at home and creates a pause in a moment of panic.This project challenges conventional healthcare methods, and speculates upon playful solutions.

I began this project investigating ‘health anxiety’, a topic I had no idea would become so relevant just a few months later. Many of us, particularly in the current climate, feel anxious about our health. For some, these common feelings can become all consuming. These people are known to health professionals as the ‘Worried Well’. I had the pleasure of working with three General Practitioners and a Postdoctoral Research Associate in psychology and neuroscience. They were essential in helping me uncover the many issues at play for both the Worried Well and the health professionals who care for them.

The crux of the project came while exploring the journeys of the Worried Well with one of the General Practitioners. She explained the importance of intervening before the worrier makes the choice to seek help which in itself can unintentionally feed their anxiety further. This brought about the idea of creating a ‘pause and reassess’ stage in the user journey before contacting a professional.

The development stage of this project did not go as expected. Due to the current pandemic, I had to think of inventive ways to create and test my ideas. Fortunately I enjoy making by hand and I believe the challenge of working with the materials to hand in fact developed my visual semantics further. I explored a range of approaches such as stop-motion animation and extensive model making and testing of materials to advance my level of visual comminution.

My objects were inspired by the renowned ‘54321 technique’, where an anxious person will concentrate on locating sense stimuli e.g. five things they see, four things they can touch and so on. While our minds have the ability to spiral and exaggerate our physical bodies anchor us to reality. Acknowledging the senses reconnects us to our physical body and acts as a tether to reality. This grounding allows the worried well to reassess their thoughts and consider symptoms more rationally, reducing unnecessary concern and visits to the doctor.