Abstract

In a project aimed at improving the wellbeing of adult women living with chronic mental disorders in long-term psychiatric internment, we discuss the effectiveness of mediated communication (internet communication via Tablet) in the context of tacit engagement and mental health. For patients with poor (if any) external social support and contact with the outside world, tablets act as "portals" to access the outside world, providing them with a psycho-social care centered on the subject, accompanying the clinical and pharmaceutical treatment. Patients and relatives accepted the mediation, we believe for very different reasons. For the patient this is a flash of contact with humanity, and for the relatives, the avoidance of physical proximity. As some patients had no relatives or friends to communicate (even remotely) with the outside world, and a school existed next door to the clinic, we visualized that the communication between these two communities could provide both a therapeutic and a poetic act of learning and compassion. The electronic portal could serve as a virtual passage between two forbidden domains. The students’ awareness about mental health was raised, but the avoidance of physical proximity made the students suspicious about the goal of the mediation. From the patient's side, however, each contact was an instance of joy. Several questions were raised from this exercise.