Co-producing Indigenous youth mental health promotion through vignettes and Photovoice

Abstract

Indigenous adolescents’ mental health is shaped by relationships with land, culture, family, school, community and historical marginalisation. Conventional tools often struggle to capture these relational, symbolic and culturally grounded dimensions of well-being. This presentation draws on the GACD-funded IMPACT programme in Dominica and Brazil to examine how creative participatory methods—adolescent-led vignettes and Photovoice—are being used to co-produce school-based mental health promotion with Indigenous adolescents and multisectoral partners. In Dominica, adolescents are developing short creative vignettes to represent situations, emotions and social realities relevant to mental well-being. These narratives help identify protective resources within families, schools and communities, while enabling discussion of sensitive issues such as distress, relationships, identity, belonging, discrimination and future aspirations without requiring direct personal disclosure. In Brazil, Photovoice with Kaingang adolescents enabled 36 young people aged 11–19 to document and interpret aspects of daily life that made them feel happy or sad. Photographs and captions surfaced protective dimensions including nature, sports, ancestry, food, meaningful places, education and future aspirations, alongside vulnerabilities linked to environmental degradation, abandoned spaces, substance use and marginalisation. Together, these approaches position adolescents as knowledge producers and co-designers rather than passive recipients of intervention. They generate actionable community knowledge, create safe spaces for dialogue, and support collaboration between adolescents, teachers, parents, health workers, community leaders and researchers. The presentation will discuss how vignettes and Photovoice can strengthen cultural relevance, trust and shared ownership, while also reflecting on facilitation, safeguarding and translating creative outputs into intervention design and evaluation.