How is the use of social media in mental health evolving?

Now that the excitement of the TWIM Awards shortlisting is over (for now, come back on 21st December for the final results) it’s time for me to pen a few thoughts on the use of social media in mental health. A lot of this is linked to my own personal journey in this area, both in terms of where I’ve come from and where I want to take things. The Past It’s just over ten years ago that I first started blogging in August 2003. Initially I was just writing personal thoughts on Livejournal, which was both a blogging platform and a proto-social network. Back then blogging was something of a niche activity, but various health professionals had already started using it. Early adopters included the likes of Random Acts of Reality, NHS Blog Doctor, Dr Rant and Nee Naw. They often had rather, shall we say, excitable comment threads. On some of them, in particular at NHS Blog Doctor, the language was of a variety that would have the average fishwife suggesting people tone it down a bit. I joined a group blog called Mental Nurse. At the time the majority of health bloggers took a pseudonym. Having something of a background as an over-educated, unemployable humanities graduate before I took up nursing, I adopted the username Zarathustra from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietszche. Mental Nurse closed down in 2010, for reasons I won’t go into or we’ll be here all day. However, in its heyday it developed a good reputation as a place where mental health pr...
Source: Dawn Willis sharing the News and Views of the Mentally Wealthy - Category: Mental Illness Authors: Tags: Mental Health, The News & Policies. Source Type: blogs