Preliminary risk assessment: Digital in Depression (D2) project

This risk assessment is associated with a project in planning on the topic of digital and depression amongst Not in Education, Employment and Training parenting emerging adults in Gauteng South Africa. Depression is a global public health emergency. It’s burden falls most heavily on those least visible to research and policy. The Digital in Depression (D²) project reframes digital technologies as dynamic, relational systems that shape the mental health of Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) emerging adults who are parenting. It asks what the digital is in the lives of those navigating depression, and why it matters for their own and their children’s mental health. Combining archival excavation, oral histories, real-time digital tracking, and participatory data reanimation, the project pioneers a multisystemic, historically-grounded, and culturally-aligned approach to depression resilience in a digital world. Methodologically bold and epistemologically pragmatic, it integrates storytelling, statistics, and social justice to foreground an Africa(n)-centred, Majority World theory of digitally-mediated mental health that sets the agenda for the next decade of digital innovation in youth mental health.