Through some conversations with founders, I sparked the idea of using soft toys as a cure for depression. The focus has shifted from children in faraway war and poverty-stricken areas to my closed friends who are suffering from mental illness. They range from mild anxiety disorders to chronically depressed patients.
Can these once-loved dolls transmit love silently to them, making them feel needed too?
As a result, I searched the professional psychological counseling website, what can I do as a friend for depressed patients? Does effective companionship alleviate their suffering?
The answer is yes.
-”To get out of the depression predicament, a patient needs a process, and all you have to do is to accompany him through this process. If he wants to speak, you will talk with him; if he remains silent, you will be silent with him… What you can do is listen and observe, and satisfy his inner needs as much as possible.”
-“The best things that friends and family can do is simply listen. They often don’t need to say anything, just being willing to listen to your problems makes you feel less alone and isolated”
Quoted from mind.org.uk
This has increased my confidence in adopting second-hand soft toys to cure mental illness. Therefore, I designed an experiment to invite two patients with depression to adopt soft toys on the loved before website, and record their psychological changes with the soft toys for two weeks.
Both subjects are my close friends. Since depressed patients lack a sense of security and trust in strangers, I can only observe and record my friends around me. Two weeks after receiving the plush toys, I made a return visit to them online and got the positive responses:
- Rann: I can easily get into a low mood, and sometimes I have no idea why, and I can only watch it get worse and worse. When I received the softie from Loved Before, I saw the freshness and enthusiasm for life in his hazy eyes, I gave it a new name Gary, and I told him that night that no one will ever abandoned, we will always be with each other.
- Ling: I would go into crazy sadness after the hilarity. I often feel that I am a useless person, without the value of existence. I also agreed to participate in this project because I thought maybe these second-hand dolls were the same as mine. But when the little guy came, he made me feel like he needed me, I was the one who was needed, and I felt healed by him.
Q: What do you think is the difference between the company of softies and the company of your friends and family?
- Rann: Because I’m not the only option for family and friends, but the relationship between Gary and I is the only one – I chose him on the adoption site and he chose me to be his partner.
- Ling: I think they are tolerant of me and will not despise me. In my sudden depression, I would cry uncontrollably, but I didn’t want this embarrassing side to be seen by people who care me a lot, because they were anxious enough about my depressive symptoms. But this soft little guy is always with me silently. I know he can understand my feelings, but he will not force me to come out of my emotions immediately.
Concluding
Strengths: The second-hand plush toy market is a rarely touched field, since the development is not mature and the market acceptance is not enough. But Loved Before, a soft toy adoption website, has brought me a lot of inspiration. Combined with previous research on multiple public welfare channels, I am even more convinced that plush toys can deliver love and healing to more people who need psychological comfort. I can also feel from the positive feedback from the two depression patients that second-hand does not mean waste, but means experience and empathy. Although they are not officially medically sanctioned treatments, a soft toy is far more acceptable to patients than antidepressants.
Weeknesses: The experimental sample is not sufficient, because it is difficult to find samples of depressed patients willing to join the program. They are mostly reluctant to socialize and to disclose their symptoms. Thus I can’t use two samples to prove that adopting soft toys can cure depression, only that they are a kind of target for second-hand soft toys.
From this project, I understand that adequate preliminary research can help me get more inspiration: I searched for several ways of public welfare from how to save abandoned plush toys, and got inspiration for using second-hand toys to empathize with depressed patients. Although I reject social networking, in this project, I actively contacted the founder of the public welfare project and the initiator of the second-hand doll website, and achieved effective communication and progress, which broadened my knowledge and contacts in the industry.