Mental health issues are on the rise amongst young people and Wellcome have launched a massive programme funding the next generation of treatments and approaches. We helped them creatively communicate their approach.

Bring to life a framework for talking about mental health, whatever discipline you’re coming from - academia, lived experience, policy, advocacy - with ideas and props that can be used in meetings and conferences, face-to-face and online.

Wellcome used the term ‘active ingredients’ to refer to the aspects of a mental health interventions that ‘drive clinical effect, are conceptually well defined, and link to specific hypothesised mechanisms of action’. 

The relationship between food and its ingredients is similar. Food ingredients contain important nutrients for a healthy life. Some may provide particular flavours or textures, to taste. Some can be used by themselves, and others can be combined to produce something really tasty. Different quantities and methods can even turn the same ingredients into a completely different dish. It’s a rich source of metaphor, widely and commonly understood. 

We developed this similarity into a powerful and simple creative framework.

A ‘mental health store cupboard’: full of food ingredients, each labelled as one of the 26 mental health ‘active ingredients’ identified by Wellcome.

The store cupboard and food metaphors help Wellcome bring to life a range of conversations about the active ingredients of mental health. It helps illustrate how the combinations that ‘work’ can vary from person to person, from time to time and place to place. It can immediately suggest which ingredients work alone, or how you might combine them in countless ‘recipes’. It’s a reminder that new ingredients and combinations can be discovered or introduced all the time. The metaphor of food allows us to shift the focus onto 'what works and why'. It is also simple, concrete, vivid and cross-cultural.