Sharing Universal Stories of Depression

Sharing Universal Stories Of Depression aims to increase access to culturally and linguistically appropriate information on depression for people no matter their language or literacy level.

Sharing Universal Stories of Depression is focused on raising awareness about depression among culturally and linguistically diverse communities using italk – an innovative approach using technology and community engagement to develop communication tools in visual form – not text.

They say a picture tells a thousand words.  With italk, pictures speak a thousand languages. italk provides multilingual information for a multicultural world. It is spoken, not written and uses the cultural context of different communities to frame issues and information in accessible ways to help people talk, share and learn in their own language.

italk is the brainchild of the team from isee-ilearn and has been developed and implemented in the Northern Territory where it has demonstrated its capacity to communicate and educate around key issues of concern regardless of English literacy and language skills.

Now the team from isee-ilearn are partnering with beyondblue, the national depression initiative, to test the utility and transferability of the italk communication and education concept among culturally and linguistically diverse communities within Australia.

Sharing Universal Stories of Depression aims to increase awareness of the nature of depression and options for healing, increase access to culturally and linguistically appropriate information on depression for people who have English as a second language and increase mutual empathy and understanding between different language groups and the broader community around the issue of depression.

Check out the italk pitch here.