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When technology designers work on mental health issues that people tend to conceal or struggle to describe, they often end up with elegant solutions that can make problems worse, according to new research from the University at Buffalo School of Management.

The study, published in the journal Decision Support Systems, explores "wicked psychosocial problems"—the painful mental disorders people hide—to uncover how scientists can get to the root of problems like social anxiety and loneliness before developing technical solutions.

"Stigma, shame and fear of being judged keep the real problems out of view," says study co-author Joana Gaia, Ph.D., clinical assistant professor of management science and systems in the UB School of Management.

"People tend to minimize what they are going through, disclose only fragments or reframe their situation in more acceptable terms. Designers then build tools like digital therapy services and self-guided mental health apps around a picture of the problem that was never accurate to begin with."

The researchers compared two independent design science projects to examine how each team defined the problem. The first used topic modeling and hand-coding to analyze more than 6,000 anonymous forum posts that explored social anxiety disorder among adults. The second used staff interviews, call observations and workshops to study loneliness among older adults who called a service center repeatedly without ever saying they were lonely.

Their findings revealed that the people with social anxiety weren't getting help because they were worried about being judged, not because help was hard to find.

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