Audible Thoughts – A unique research project in mental health
I have found undertaking PhD research a solitary experience, so it is lovely to find other people on the same journey and researching in a similar field. Ali is doing fascinating research at the same University as me and I can’t wait to meet up with her and exchange notes. Here is a summary of her research and a request to get involved: My name is Ali Hull and I’m a PhD student at the University of .Leeds. I’m carrying out some research into the ways in which we think, talk, write about and otherwise represent mental health, with a view to understanding how those things impact on clinical practice. I am looking for people who are aged 18+ and have experience of NHS mental health care to take part in my study. Purpose of the research There are many different ways to think about mental health. Service users and mental health staff don’t always agree on what causes mental health problems, or what can be done to help those who experience them. This sometimes contributes to a mutual sense of ‘not being understood.’ Previous research tells us that staff who work with people who are mentally unwell sometimes find their work challenging. To help them cope, staff use things like humour to help them. My research attempts to bring together the ways we think about mental health and the way mental health staff deal with the difficulties of working with those who are distressed. The hope is that my research findings will be used to help improve care. The first phase of my research will help me to understand...
Maintaining a personal/professional equilibrium – a salutary tale
This morning I tweeted a photograph of an envelope, in which I was returning the free copy of The Sun newspaper that has dropped through my letter box, alongside the letterboxes millions of people in last few days. When I made an off-the-cuff decision to post that photo, I was drawing on a comment made by someone about returning theirs the night before – my head was in social/personal mode. I did a quick work/professional mode scan, got a green light, and pressed the ‘send’ button. I do generally steer clear of politics on Twitter and tend to save ranting and hyperbole for my personal Facebook page – where the biggest consequence is my dad occasionally telling me off. But, I detest quite a few things associated with The Sun, not least the topless images of women, or ‘girls’ as The Sun prefers to call them on their page 3. I personally think it’s ok to have views about such things and remain professional – I’d happily share and debate them with my colleagues at work. However, it was only as I reached the post box that I remembered that this week I emailed a Sun editor to request an interview as part of my PhD research. In choosing to tweet that photo, and make a statement about my personal/political views, I had scanned for professional but completely forgotten to do the same for research – at that particular moment it was outside of my conscious awareness. In my email to the editor I had given my blog and Twitter details, a modern form of verification, and I guess I’ve compromised any...
The People versus The Institution – who wins?
What is the relationship between day-to-day practices by ordinary people in social media spaces and institutions? By institutions I mean structures of social order governing behaviours of sets of individuals in a community – in this instance, an NHS Trust or a professional body in healthcare. I’ve been mulling this over for some time… Remember when it was like the wild-west? When I first started my PhD research, a little under three years ago, I had become intrigued by everyday conversations in the blogosphere and on Twitter, which were either implicitly or explicitly contesting the dominant narratives of institutions. There seemed to me to be a heady mix of people accessing mental health services and working in them (usually but not always anonymous) having conversations with a very different quality than those I was used to experiencing within the parameters of professional or institutional discourses. These seemed to me to be often bold, public conversations that challenged the status quo and at times felt wild and risky and exhilarating. The institution re-asserts itself During those three years I’ve noticed professional practices tiptoeing quietly but assuredly from the boardroom and the ward into social media spaces. This is exemplified by the plethora of guidance on use of social media for pretty much any professional group in the health sector. They are often defensively focused with a tendency to emphasise professionalism and boundaries over the affordances of public conversation to positively disrupt received relationships and effect change. I recall when I set up my blog in 2012 a colleague asked me how on earth I’d managed to get approval from my...
One cop, a police force, and some social media accounts
Why blog about recent events in the police force? Well the purpose of my blog is to capture key learning points, reflections and even events as they emerge, which both influence my PhD research and my work role. So when @teaandtalking live tweeted her experience from an inpatient ward I thought that was a formative moment and, with her support, blogged about it. Over the last week the mental health social media sphere has been buzzing with the suspension and resumption of Inspector Michael Brown aka @mentalhealthcop’s Twitter and blog accounts. I don’t intend to describe what happened but you can check out @Sectioned_ excellent summary if you aren’t aware of it or would like to find out more. I haven’t pestered @mentalhealthcop for an interview as he quite rightly wishes to not discuss the event in public. I am also not going to speculate about the whys and wherefores of what happened. However, with @mentalhealthcop’s blessing, I am going to share a few thoughts and reflections on what this episode might mean for public sector professionals and institutions in social media spaces. Back to the beginning (for me at least) Over the last few years Twitter and blogging, as well as other platforms, have become increasingly mainstream in the public sector. With more and more people (particularly those in formal leadership positions) entering these spaces, and with the advent of social media guidelines for pretty much every professional group, Twitter and other platforms are increasingly being recognised and promoted as legitimate spaces for professionals to occupy. Are the stakes higher? My sense of what happened to @mentalhealthcop is...
You are what you tweet – a #socialNHS
You are what you tweet – this play on words from @Patient_Leader, with whom I am delivering a session at the NHS Expo Pop-up University on Monday 3 March, got me thinking about the part social media can play in enabling all of us who are part of the NHS to be more sociable. What might we sew and what might we reap? Are we what we tweet? Missing the point If we think about social media platforms, such as Twitter, as simply tools for communications or marketing; if we think about them in terms of an opportunity to broadcast information, if we deride people for tweeting a picture of their lunch or sharing the incidentals of their everyday life, then I think we’ve missed the point. Social capital I’d like to suggest that a better approach to thinking about social media is in terms of social capital. Social capital, put very simply, is the benefit we get from our relationships. We tend to have a mixture of strong and loose ties in our relationships. Strong ties might be with our family and close friends (called bonding social capital). Loose ties might be with our neighbours, colleagues or people we have a chat with when walking the dog or at the school gates (called bridging social capital). The greater our social capital the stronger our health and wellbeing, the more we are able to reach our potential, and the more we can get things done. Relationships are as much about seeking commonality, sharing details of our everyday life and thoughts, as much as they are about sharing resources –...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
