Mental health: the dangers of the social media diagnosis

#MentalHealth #Depression #Anxiety #SocialMedia

Even Facebook agrees that social media can be bad for your mental health. And research by the Department of Education has found that the mental well-being of teenage girls in the UK is worsening, with the impact of social media cited as the cause.

Yet my research reveals that more people are turning to these platforms for help with their mental health issues. This has been exacerbated as the crisis in the NHS sees waiting times for appointments grow. While most of the people I spoke to believed social media helped them, there is a concern that it could be adding to ongoing mental health problems.

Mental health has recently become the focus of attention within UK policy, with the proposed rehash of the Mental Health Act, and the new Power Threat Meaning framework, which aims to reduce the “medicalization” of mental health. Despite raised awareness of some the issues, more and more people are turning away from their GPs as they fail to get the support they need. This is usually due to lengthy waiting lists for counseling, or a tendency to overly rely on prescribing medication as a cure-all.

Many of these people turn to online support, which in recent years has been through the medium of anonymized peer-to-peer community forums. This has evolved and people with mental ill-health are now turning to social media to “out” their health issues.

But social media’s relationship with mental health is controversial. If even Facebook is telling us that being on social media can be bad for our health, why are people using it to create support networks?

Celebrity social media “outings” have also helped to raise awareness. Last year, Sinead O’Connor publicly posted a video of herself on social media where she was clearly in need of support. She said it was her hope “that this video is somehow helpful”, using the hashtag #OneOfMillions. Her post sparked discussions about the “right way” of asking for help, but the debate by no means came up with any answers.

Status updates and future employers

It is estimated that 39% of health information seekers use social media, often joining a specific health-related group. But many people are now choosing to use their personal profiles to post their “social outing” of their mental health problems. While there is no statistical evidence for the number of users doing this, Facebook have realized that people are using their status updates to talk about their mental health, including suicidal feelings.

Not only has social media been linked with an increase in cyberbullying but posting information about risky behaviors (such as social drinking) has been linked to a decrease in job opportunities in the future. It is therefore realistic to imagine that current and future employers are looking at our mental health history if we are posting about our health online.

My research has shown that there are many positives about asking for support for mental ill-health through social media, as long as you have already sought medical advice and have a firm diagnosis. General status updates that are woeful or cryptic may mean that the person is seen as “whingy” and friends may not see a cry for help, potentially leaving the poster isolated and vulnerable.

Two of my Ph.D. participants who used social media sites to out their mental problems found that they were still intolerant of others who did the same. One said of their friend’s Facebook activity:

Most of her posts are about her battles, her daily battles, and she’s really open about it. And actually, I don’t mind, but sometimes even I go, well you don’t need to share everything.

Social media might not be the best to seek help for people struggling with mental issues. Shutterstock/dolphfyn

Another expressed her irritation at having to deal with other people’s problems when she is trying to get support with her own.

The issue is that people may be getting fed up with constant posts of people talking about their mental health and there are signs that they can retaliate in a negative way. One of the participants in my research stated that after he had “come out” on Facebook, a (former) friend told him, in no uncertain terms, that Facebook was “not the place for that kind of thing”.

So although Facebook can have a positive effect for those seeking support should we really be looking at social media as a supportive mechanism for health? Or should we still pretend that our lives are perfect and that we are always happy because that is what our Facebook and Instagram “friends” want to see?

In the short term, it seems that social media could be helpful in creating supportive networks for people with mental ill-health. But in the long term, it depends on how we start to challenge societal perceptions of the issue. If nothing changes, then at least be prepared for a lack of job offers in the future.

By Kim Heyes 2/28/18

Coping With Moods: The Challenge of the Turbulent Mind

#Mood #Impulses #selfregulate #selfsoothe #Triple5LightTherapy #BlackMaleTherapist #Psychotherapy The power of moods and impulses can be overwhelming, but we can learn to self-regulate and self-soothe through awareness practices like meditation and mindfulness. By developing a healthy dialogue with our emotional nature, we can access deeper parts of ourselves and become more resilient in the face of stress and pressure. Rather than being swept away by our ever-shifting moods, we can learn to pause and reflect before acting. by Gillian McCann, Ph.D., and Gitte Bechsgaard, RP

The Price of Perfection

#Perfection #CopingStrategies #Mindfulness #AllorNothingThinking #Catastrophizing, Broadly speaking, perfectionism is a personality style where people set exceptionally high standards for themselves in order to achieve perfection. However, the motive behind perfectionism is not the achievement of perfection, but rather, the avoidance of failure. More simply speaking, perfectionism is really a type of anxiety. Anxiety is adaptive and evolutionarily speaking, protects us from danger. In cavemen days, anxiety helped our ancestors flee from predators. However, in modern days, rarely do we need to flee from predators. Consequently, maladaptive anxiety is increasingly common and acts as a faulty alarm system- alerting us to danger as if there were a predator chasing us when actually we are not in real danger. In regards to perfectionism, those with this type of anxiety are so afraid to fail, they go to great lengths to avoid the possibility of failure. Underneath, an alarm system is g...

Psychologists Have Created A League Table Of Scary And Revolting Animals Phobias

#Psychology #MentalHealth #Phobias #Animalphobias #Spider #Snake #Dog You may be best advised not to read this article late at night or before you eat. Psychologists at the National Institute of Mental Health and Charles University in the Czech Republic have surveyed a large sample of non-clinical volunteers to gauge their reaction to 24 creatures that are commonly the source of specific animals phobias. The results, published in the British Journal of Psychology, contribute to our understanding of animal phobias and could prove incredibly useful to horror writers. Among the key findings is that spiders were unique in being both intensely fear- and disgust-inducing in equal measure. The researchers said this may be due to their mix of disgusting properties – including their “quirky ‘too-many-legs’ body plan” – combined with the fact they are “…omnipresent in our homes, often lurking in the hidden dark places and capable of fast unpredictable movement.” In other words, the intense ...

Kate Bush's "50 Words for Snow"

#50WordsforSnow #KateBush #RunningUpThatHill From up on that hill, perhaps wearing a capelet over a flowy Victorian gown, Kate Bush has been regarded as a spirit saint of fearless individuality by a generation of musicians such as Björk and Tori Amos as well as younger mystics-in-training such as Florence Welch, Leslie Feist and Bat for Lashes. All that adoration in the ether must’ve stirred the reclusive British singer-songwriter to create not just one album this year — “Director’s Cut,” a reinterpretation of songs from “The Sensual World” and “The Red Shoes” — but also a second one, “50 Words for Snow,” an art-song cycle that veers from delicate to blustery but always with a sheen of elegance. Bush grounds her songs in the permafrost of winter, with her piano work sounding like the first stirrings after a cold snap. “Among Angels” could be the soundtrack for plants stretching toward the new spring sun, but as much as it’s connected to the natural world, the s...

Triple5Light Therapy

Search This Blog