Social Media and Mental Health

1. Empowering a Silent Community Social Media & Mental Health

3. Inequality

5. Equality

6. Inclusion

8. Web 2.0

10. A good mesh of people and groups engaged in action around different kinds of interests is also likely to challenge narrow perceptions and prejudices...Get them out in the world, communicating and working with people on things, and their assumptions will be challenged. David Gauntlett, Making is Connecting (2011)

11. Mental health today The top-down approach in the mainstream media puts too much power in the hands of other people, leaving the diagnosed relatively disempowered and often ill-informed about their condition and the choices available to them.

13. Emphasises deviance rather than diversity

14. Challenging this ends the dominance of patient and outcast roles, making it more likely people can contribute to our communities

17. Acknowledge the contribution we can make to our recovery.

18. Offer hope

19. Encourage broader perspective about the diagnosed by the wider community.

21. 'Sit back and listen'

22. Tends to encourage stigma, discrimination & prejudice

25. Education

26. Contact (the most promising approach)Corrigan & Penn (2003)

28. A conversation: participation, empowering

29. We are the audience AND the producers

32. We can tap into the experience of all sorts of people who can question the advice and treatment of medical personnel to improve our healthcare.

33. We can interact with individuals and communities, start to demystify ideas about us, leading - ideally - to improvements in other aspect of our lives

35. What can we do? Using social media to improve the lives and prospects of people with mental health diagnoses

37. Social participation is healthy

38. What can we do as individuals within organisations, communities and the wider society to improve things for us and the world around us?

41. Reluctance of organisations

42. Low uptake can lead to insufficient numbers

44. Potential to change clinicians' and clients' experiences of healthcare