Social media use for supporting mental health (SMILE)

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill Brown ◽  
Amy Leigh Rathbone ◽  
Julie Prescott
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Personal Control ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Support Mechanism ◽  
Mental Health Issues

Purpose The SMILE study (social media as informal support for people with mental illness: an exploratory study) aimed to explore how people with mental health issues use and value social media as a support mechanism. Design/methodology/approach A systematic search of Facebook and Twitter identified groups and pages relating to mental health issues. In total, 203 users over the age of 18 were recruited via Facebook and Twitter. Any user who considered themselves to experience mental health problems could opt to participate and no exclusion criteria were applied. A mixed-methods online survey retrieved demographic and qualitative data by asking users to describe their personal experiences when using social media for mental health support. Findings Users perceive Facebook and Twitter as useful online resources to gain informational and emotional support and to share experiences. The benefits were; ease of access, anonymity and personal control over engagement levels. Users had subjective experiences of engagement, however, overall these were deemed positive. Using Facebook and Twitter for mental health provided users with a sense of connectedness and reduced feelings of isolation. Originality/value The qualitative methodology allowed participants to share their experiences and views, with positive implications for services. Social media was discussed as a prospective tool for raising awareness and reducing stigma. The study highlights the scope for mental health service providers to tap into the social media consumer market and provide quality online support provision.

Mental health and stigma in Saudi Arabia: a scoping review

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nada Alattar ◽  
Anne Felton ◽  
Theodore Stickley
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Mental Health Stigma ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Mental Health Issues

Purpose Stigma associated with mental health problems is widespread in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Consequently, this may prevent many Saudi people from accessing the mental health-care services and support they need. The purpose of this study is to consider how stigma affects people needing to access mental health services in the KSA. To achieve this aim, this study reviews the knowledge base concerning stigma and mental health in KSA and considers specific further research necessary to increase the knowledge and understanding in this important area. Design/methodology/approach This review examines the relevant literature concerning mental health stigma and related issues in KSA using the Arksey and O'Malley and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses frameworks. As a scoping review, it has used a systematic approach in literature searching. The results of the search were then thematically analysed and the themes were then discussed in light of the concepts of stigma and mental health. Findings Stigma around mental health impedes access to care, the nature of care and current clinical practice in the KSA. The voices of those with mental health issues in KSA are almost entirely unrepresented in the literature. Originality/value The review identifies that mental health stigma and cultural beliefs about mental health in KSA may act as barriers to accessing services. The voice of mental health service users in KSA remains largely unheard. If public discussion of mental health issues can increase, people’s experiences of accessing services may be improved.

scholarly journals Attitudes surrounding the disclosure of mental illness

BJPsych Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (S1) ◽  
pp. S288-S289
Author(s):  
Brishti Sengupta ◽  
Pritha Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
General Population ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Population Group ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Attitude Shift

AimsTo survey the effect of COVID-19 on mental health of both medical professionals and the general population, as well as attitudes surrounding the disclosure of mental illness.MethodAn online survey comprised of two questionnaires, one for medical professionals and one for the general population, were conducted via social media. Both questionnaires asked respondents of the effect of COVID-19 on their mental health, and the former asked respondents about the effect of COVID-19 on their patient group's mental health. The questionnaires went on to ask respondents about their attitudes to mental health disclosure in various scenarios, to varying groups of people. The general population group was also asked how they would react if someone else disclosed their mental illness to them.ResultThe questionnaire for the medical professionals gained 62 respondents and the one for the general population had 122 respondents, with responses from multiple nations. Overall, COVID-19 has affected everyone's mental health to a degree, and all groups had reservations about disclosing their mental health issues to others. The medical professionals were especially reluctant to disclose mental illness to their patients, but were more comfortable when it came to disclosing mental illness to colleagues. The general population, however, was much more reluctant to disclose mental health issues to their colleagues. The general population were, on the whole, willing to listen to and help anyone who came to them with mental health concerns. Both groups surveyed showed reluctance toward disclosure to the wider community.ConclusionCOVID-19 appears to significantly affect not only physical health, but mental health as well. There is at least some degree of stigma surrounding the disclosure of mental health issues. While most would be happy to help anyone who came to them with their mental health problems, there seems to be an attitude shift when people must contend with mental health issues of their own.

Media, Social Media, and the Securitization of Mental Health Problems in Nepal

2021 ◽  
pp. 838-859
Author(s):  
Sudeep Uprety ◽  
Rajesh Ghimire
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
Journalistic Professionalism

This chapter attempts to unfold the trend and nature of mainstream and social media coverage on mental health issues in Nepal through suicide case of Yama Buddha, a popular musician. Using the securitization theory and concepts of threat construction and threat neutralization, major findings through content analysis and key informant interviews reveal reputed mainstream media following cautious route towards threat neutralization and therefore, maintaining a level of journalistic professionalism. However, especially in the other online media, blogs, and other social media, there were sensationalist words and tone used to attract the audience, triggering various sorts of emotional responses, thereby fulfilling the act of securitization. Major recommendations from this chapter include more awareness and understanding about the nature and type of mental health problems; capacity building of journalists and media professionals to better understand and report on mental health problems; development and proper implementation of media guidelines on reporting mental health issues.

Assessing the knowledge, perceptions, and mental health impact of COVID-19 among students in Rwanda

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hawa Iye Obaje ◽  
Grace Chinelo Okengwu ◽  
Jolly Josiah Kenan ◽  
Aimable Uwimana ◽  
Andre Ndayambaje ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Knowledge Score ◽  
Health Impact ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Offline Learning ◽  
Learning Platforms

Purpose This paper aims to assess the knowledge, perceptions and mental health impact of COVID-19 among students in Rwanda. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a cross-sectional online survey questionnaire. Findings The mean knowledge score among the 375 respondents was 75.14% (SD ± 19.1), with 195 (55.1%) of the respondents scoring below 80%. Students who believed that COVID-19 education was sufficient were more likely to have lower knowledge levels (OR = 1.84, 95% CI = 1.15; 2.94). While most respondents were aware of their vulnerability to the virus, they did not see themselves at risk of becoming infected. The percentage of respondents reported to have some form of mental health issues was 49.7%. The three most important factors in influencing mental health were age, history of mental health issues, and the way news was reported. Education quality was less affected for those who received online schooling (OR = 0.55, 95% CI = 0.33, 0.94). Practical implications Education about COVID-19 should be strengthened by capitalizing on existing online and offline learning platforms to frequently update new or changing information. Originality/value This paper was the first study assessing the knowledge, perception and mental health impact of COVID-19 among Rwanda students.

scholarly journals Peer Responses to Trans Youth Tweeting About Self-Harm and Suicidality

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Drew Simms
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Young People ◽  
Protective Factor ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Trans Youth

BackgroundTransgender youth have been found to be at higher risk of experiencing common mental health problems than their cisgender peers, but there has been little research into the mechanisms of peer support among this group. Research into how young people communicate about self-harm and suicidality on social media has found patterns of behavior in which young people encourage each other's risky and self-injurious actions, but whether this holds true among minority groups such as trans youth has not been established.MethodTwitter biographies were searched to find self-identifying trans people aged 14–18 years. The resulting accounts were searched for key words related to common mental health issues. The tweets caught by the search terms and their replies were coded into themes using a combination of inductive and deductive coding. The occurrence of themes were quantified and analyzed using SPSS 24.Results1,468 tweets were analyzed from 235 accounts; 133 (56.6%) of the accounts with relevant content received no public replies to tweets mentioning mental health issues. Of the 102 (43.4%) that did receive public replies, 64 (62.7%) received a maximum of two replies. Three themes were found in replies to tweets, Support, Feeling the Same Way, and Advice. Most replies were expressions of support, followed by expressions of feeling the same way; advice was rare. There were no incidents of replies that were dismissive of or encouraged self-injurious behavior.DiscussionFindings differ from existing research on how youth interact with each other online with regard to mental health issues: the trans youth in this study were not found to encourage risky and self-injurious behavior in each other. This has implications for caring for trans youth in mental health settings, where social media use is normally discouraged, as its use may be a protective factor for trans youth specifically.

scholarly journals Mental Health Computing via Harvesting Social Media Data

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia Jia
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Real World Datasets ◽  
Media Data

Mental health has become a general concern of people nowadays. It is of vital importance to detect and manage mental health issues before they turn into severe problems. Traditional psychological interventions are reliable, but expensive and hysteretic. With the rapid development of social media, people are increasingly sharing their daily lives and interacting with friends online. Via harvesting social media data, we comprehensively study the detection of mental wellness, with two typical mental problems, stress and depression, as specific examples. Initializing with binary user-level detection, we expand our research towards multiple contexts, by considering the trigger and level of mental health problems, and involving different social media platforms of different cultures. We construct several benchmark real-world datasets for analysis and propose a series of multi-modal detection models, whose effectiveness are verified by extensive experiments. We also make in-depth analysis to reveal the underlying online behaviors regarding these mental health issues.

Media, Social Media, and the Securitization of Mental Health Problems in Nepal

2018 ◽  
pp. 42-69
Author(s):  
Sudeep Uprety ◽  
Rajesh Ghimire
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
Journalistic Professionalism

This chapter attempts to unfold the trend and nature of mainstream and social media coverage on mental health issues in Nepal through suicide case of Yama Buddha, a popular musician. Using the securitization theory and concepts of threat construction and threat neutralization, major findings through content analysis and key informant interviews reveal reputed mainstream media following cautious route towards threat neutralization and therefore, maintaining a level of journalistic professionalism. However, especially in the other online media, blogs, and other social media, there were sensationalist words and tone used to attract the audience, triggering various sorts of emotional responses, thereby fulfilling the act of securitization. Major recommendations from this chapter include more awareness and understanding about the nature and type of mental health problems; capacity building of journalists and media professionals to better understand and report on mental health problems; development and proper implementation of media guidelines on reporting mental health issues.

scholarly journals Clinical Characteristics, Activity Levels and Mental Health Problems in Children with Long COVID: A Survey of 510 Children

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danilo Buonsenso ◽  
Ferran Espuny Pujol ◽  
Daniel Munblit ◽  
Sammie Mcfarland ◽  
Frances Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Physical Activity ◽  
Joint Pain ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Neuropsychiatric Symptoms ◽  
World Health ◽  
Medical Community ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Mental Health Issues

Background The World Health Organization has recently recognized Long COVID, calling the international medical community to strengthen research and comprehensive care of patients with this condition. However, if Long COVID pertains to children as well is not yet clear. Methods An anonymous, online survey was developed by an organization of parents of children suffering from persisting symptoms since initial infection. Parents were asked to report signs and symptoms, physical activity and mental health issues. Only children with symptoms persisting for more than four weeks were included. Results 510 children were included (56.3% females) infected between January 2020 and January 2021. At their initial COVID-19 infection, 22 (4.3%) children were hospitalized. Overall, children had persisting COVID-19 for a mean of 8.2 months (SD 3.9). Most frequent symptoms were: Tiredness and weakness (444 patients, 87.1% of sample), Fatigue (410, 80.4%), Headache (401, 78.6%), Abdominal pain (387, 75.9%), Muscle and joint pain (309, 60.6%), Post-exertional malaise (274, 53.7%), rash (267, 52.4%). 484 (94.9%) children had had at least four symptoms. 129 (25.3%) children have suffered constant COVID-19 infection symptoms, 252 (49.4%) have had periods of apparent recovery and then symptoms returning, and 97 (19.0%) had a prolonged period of wellness followed by symptoms. Only 51 (10.0%) children have returned to previous levels of physical activity. Parents reported a significant prevalence of Neuropsychiatric symptoms. Conclusions Our study provides further evidence on Long COVID in children. Symptoms like fatigue, headache, muscle and joint pain, rashes and heart palpitations, and mental health issues like lack of concentration and short memory problems, were particularly frequent and confirm previous observations, suggesting that they may characterize this condition. A better comprehension of Long COVID is urgently needed..

A brief exploratory synthesis of portrayal of mental health issues in the script and characters of TV series Wallander (Swedish Version)

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S154-S154
Author(s):  
S. Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
International Classification Of Diseases ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Swedish Version ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Individual Character

IntroductionThe modern Swedish crime drama series Wallander by Henning Mankell presents a good portrayal of mental health issues in 21st century post modern world, including the contribution of biological, psychological and social issues in predisposing, perpetuating and maintaining them.AimThe aim of the exploratory synthesis is to study the characters in Wallander focusing on the portrayal of their mental health with a view on formulating biological, psychological and social factors that play a role in their development. Furthermore, mental health is reviewed in first world culture acclimatizing itself to the themes emerging from post-modern globalised world.MethodThe episodes of Wallander (Swedish Version) are reviewed focusing on the characters and the plots for each episode matching them with mental health diagnoses offered in International classification of diseases.DiscussionThe results are collated and a general commentary is offered on the observations and motifs revealed in the portrayal. The focus will be on individual character formulations (both recurring main characters as well other side characters). In addition, there is a commentary on contributing to mental health problems in a post-modern industrial society.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.

scholarly journals Ecological Counseling as an Integrative Cognitive Complexity Intervention Framework for Students with COVID-19 Pandemic-Caused Mental Health Challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nanang E. Gunawan ◽  
Tamarine Foreman
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Cognitive Complexity ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Virtual Learning ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Academic Supports ◽  
Mental Health Challenges ◽  
Available Information ◽  
Ecological Counseling

This article aims to present a practical conceptual perspective on ecological counseling as a theoretical framework for counselors' integrative cognitive complexity to work with students who experience mental health challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The transition of educational activities into virtual learning has caused various challenges for students worldwide that risk their mental health. Indonesia is one of the countries implementing virtual learning for more than a year with various social, technical, and environmental obstacles. Besides the benefit of distanced learning, this online learning model has widely caused mild to severe anxiety among students. Although researchers have investigated the impacts of virtual learning on mental health problems, the intervention strategies to help students with mental health issues remain lack attention. Ecological counseling has been known for its principles of seeing individuals' mental health issues involving a broader milieu that allows counselors to understand clients according to their contextual living systems. This framework offers a culturally sensitive perspective to help counselors withdraw appropriate and best available information for intervention purposes. This article also includes an application illustration of the ecological counseling framework in the Indonesian community as a practical guideline. It is expected that this article provides academic supports for academics to work with students dealing with their mental health challenges during this pandemic adhere to the counselors' integrative cognitive complexity functions.Keywords: ecological counseling, cognitive complexity, COVID-19 mental health, counselors, Indonesia

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