Supporting practitioners to make sense of social media in mental health practice

Supporting practitioners to make sense of social media in mental health practice

by | Mar 22, 2013 | mental health, NHS stuff | 7 comments

  Social Media in Mental Health Practice – online network tools for recovery and living well I use every opportunity to chat to people using and working in mental health services about social media. And what I experience is disconnect. Many practitioners are fearful. Many more are excited by the possibilities but not sure where to start. A smaller number are already confidently using social media to connect, network and innovate. Most are predominantly thinking about their use of social media in relation to personal/professional identity and ensuring their online behaviours are consistent with guidance from their professional body or organisation. What I see much less of, is practitioners having the opportunity to consider how social media may form a part of their toolkit – helping people think about recovery in the context of their online as well as their offline lives and the interplay between the two. At the same time I see many people with lived experience using all sorts of social media to take control, connect with peers, campaign, have fun and develop. There is where I see the disconnect and this is where the idea for Social Media in Mental Health Practice came from – a desire to capture many of the fantastic ways in which social media are already being used, to amplify, and to give practitioners ideas and tips about how they might incorporate this knowledge into their day-to-day practice. It isn’t a ‘how to’ book and it isn’t about professional identity. Its purpose is to help mental health practitioners who are new to social media, consider the possibilities and the challenges, by...
What I love about Twitter – spontaneity

What I love about Twitter – spontaneity

by | Mar 15, 2013 | What I love about Twitter | 1 comment

My What I love about Twitter posts are intended as tiny vignettes of transient moments that capture the joys of Twitter for me. They are a personal record of my social media learning curve and I hope also illustrate the possibilities of Twitter to people who are getting to grips with the platform. What I love about Twitter is the way it can sponateously connect me to others during a particular moment or experience. This week I spent a couple of days at the NHS Expo #ExPo2013 which was a mix of speeches, workshops and stands all about innovation in health. Twitter made the event a multi-dimensional one for me. I found myself seamlessly navigating my experience of attending the event both in person and via Twitter in ways which reinforced, developed and shifted my journey during each day in many and varied ways. A few examples are: Discovering who, where, what and when (I barely looked at the programme)  Unexpected encounters with people in passing “are you so-and-so off Twitter?”  Arranging to meet up with people when we both realised we were there “fancy a coffee and a catch up?”  Pre-arranged plans to follow up on conversations we had started on Twitter  Reinforcing new connections with follow up with conversations on Twitter (still continuing)  Making new online connections through retweets using the #ExPo2013 hashtag. I also managed to miss quite a few people who I’d have loved to have met up. My almost meeting with @MrBen_King was the one that really made me giggle though:     Even though I was at the event all on my own,...
What I love about Twitter – crowdsourcing

What I love about Twitter – crowdsourcing

by | Mar 9, 2013 | What I love about Twitter | 7 comments

In my experience social media evokes strong reactions in people whose primary reference point is their teenager posting Facebook status updates at the dinner table, in preference to polite conversation with their parents. So when I give presentations about social media to colleagues (particularly senior managers who are dealing day-in-day out with limited resources, meeting targets, responding to incidents, managing disciplinaries and so on) I always try to start where they are, what is important to them, and how social media might be able to help them. We often come back to the fundamental point – like it or not, social media is here, so we need to understand and engage. If I am overly zealous in my promotion of social media, I know I run the risk of further alienating people whose starting point is already fairly sceptical. But sometimes I do just have a strong desire to say ‘this is what I absolutely love about Twitter!’ and I had one of those moments last night when I crowdsourced information about mental health mood monitoring apps after an email request from a clinician. What I love is that within moments I had some information and links to apps; a colleague had been in touch to say they were looking at developing one in their service and could we discuss; it was re-tweeted, and others got in touch to see if I could send any information to them (which I did); and a few lovely people even offered to road-test a few of the apps to see how well they worked. And I had some enjoyable conversations along the...