Analyzing The Role Of Social Media Forums In Mental Health Essay.

Assessment Title: Digital Health Essay - Digital Trust

The focus of this Assignment is “Digital Trust” (privacy, security and ethics)

Choose to write about ONE technology you have engaged with.

Some examples:

- Internet/website/search engine to search for online health information

- Mobile app to track a healthy eating plan/rehabilitation/mood

- Activity tracker to meet a health or fitness goal

- Social media forum to discuss a health topic

- Digital game to promote your own physical activity

- Your experiences with My Health Record

- Having had a ‘Telehealth’ appointment with a doctor

Using the following sub-headings to layout your final essay will help you.

Your ability to identify, analyse, reflect, evaluate and reason on the good and bad of different aspects of digital health - critically assess technology for health is an important skill. It will help to ensure that the future of digital health is evidence-based, no matter what you choose to study and career to pursue.

The Health/Wellbeing Context (your introduction)

A social media forum is an open platform to connect. A social forum is a place where civilians, society, and individuals can meet openly. Medical settings use social media forums for marketing and communication. Social media forum opens up many opportunities for medical settings (Li, 2010). Social media forum is also a challenge for the medical setting. There are high chances of medical professionals getting personally involved with civil citizens. Another issue attached to to social media forum is information available there is not accurate at certain times (Davey, 2012). Mental health is an emerging health topic and discussion on social media forum becomes uncomfortable for individuals. This essay will highlight health or wellbeing challenges attached to mental health discussion on social media forums. This essay will analyse how social media forum allows achieving healthcare goals. This essay will analyse how social media forum works and how it helps in people's health. The paper will also discuss the digital trust perspective. Social media forums can be boon and bane both for the healthcare sector.         

The key goal of medical professionals is to help citizens with the best information on health topics. Social media forum is an easy and open platform that allows society or individuals to connect with healthcare professionals and get information on health topic like mental awareness. Social media forum allows meaningful discussions that address patient questions worries, and benefits in real-time. Mental health awareness is a sensitive health topic and social media forums discussion can confuse the individuals because of its wide nature. Social media forum is an open platform individuals suffering from mental illness might get negatively influenced by various types of information available on the platform.

Social media forum helps the Patients that are busy with their work. They can manage their wellbeing situations by discussing managements with medical professionals and other patients that have similar conditions (Lawn, 2010). Hospitals and other health systems can grow their platforms that allow patients to share their experiences and receive support from similar individuals. Healthcare providers can also use social media forums to inspire physician arrangement and teamwork. Social media forums are communication platform for people that can reach an extensive range of individuals, healthcare organizations can use this marketing tactic to support broader population health and preventative health initiatives. Social media forum allows easy interaction. Healthcare professionals can spread mental health awareness in people. Social media forum provides a platform where individuals can share information (Liu, 2010).   

My Goal (argument of the essay)

The digital technology that can help the community and individuals is a social media forum.  Social media forum is an online discussion forum where individuals, society, and even experienced medical professionals can discuss their queries linked to healthcare (Rice, 2016). They can get answers to their questions from other talented medical professionals or individuals that have suffered from the same disease. An online discussion can be started by asking questions, helping others with answers. One key benefit is that it is very simple to operate and is free of cost. The extensive diversity of content can be distributed through social media forums (Guy, 2013). Social media forums allow images and videos to mixed-media blog posts, polls, and info graphics on the forums that are visible to every individual.  Social media is a great way for promoting healthcare brands as well. When implemented correctly, social media forum campaigns are amazingly controlling. Social media forum helps the patients to get the information on time and helps them to reach the information in time (Househ, 2014). Patients and individuals find social media forums handy and easy sources of information. Healthcare settings or hospitals can also use social media as a stage to distribute data about mutual health circumstances, diseases, and other public health issues in the hopes of preventing these occurrences.

It is very easy to join the social media forums and the information available there is useful and relevant. However there is information that is not relevant and is wrong as well. It is essential to keep a check on who is uploading the information and is the person responsible enough that individuals could trust the information blindly. Social media tools are very handy and resourceful but it is necessary to understand which forum is genuine and honest and which is not (Fisher, 2011). Social media forums use and it did meet the expectations. It is an easy way of communicating with a wide range of people. In today's scenario when people are busy social media forums allow society, individuals, and health care professionals to communicate easily (Ventola, 2014).

It is a hyper- connected universe where maximum of the strategies are linked, and technology supports so many characteristics of life. Social media forums will hasten the acceptance and operation of information in a wide variety of technologies.  To assimilate sophisticated capabilities into technology, huge sizes of data must be collected to provide a seamless experience. It is advised that the interaction should be professional at any cost. Allowing technology to gather individual data and sending it to service workers in exchange for improved user experience, consumers are integrally is placing trust in organizations, and assuming that they will provide a duty of care over that information can be harmful. Cybercrime rates are growing internationally, and persons are placing more emphasis on how their individual information is being controlled and protected. It is essential to protect individual information. IDC outlines digital trust as allowing decisions made between two or more individuals that reflect their level of self-assurance in each other (Helsper, 2010). These conclusions are based on each entity's digital reputation and assurance stages provided by each entity's cyber security programs for a proposed digital activity. Social media forums can be trusted but it is advised to double-check all the information.    

This paper contains an analysis on social media forums as platform to discuss mental health.   Mental health is a sensitive topic. Social media forums provides open platform to individuals to discuss about sensitive issues. Social media forum is a boon and bane as well. Social media might affect individuals with mental health issues negatively since they are not in normal senses. This paper has analysed the characteristics of social media forums.

References

Davey, Z. S. (2012). e-Psychonauts: conducting research in online drug forum communities. Journal of Mental Health, 386-394.

Fisher, D. &. (2011). Cocreation is chaotic: What it means for marketing when no one has control. Marketing theory, 325-350.

Guy, I. A. (2013). Mining expertise and interests from social media. in Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on World Wide Web, 515-526.

Helsper, E. J. (2010). Digital natives: where is the evidence?. British educational research journal, 503-520.

Househ, M. B. (2014). Empowering patients through social media: the benefits and challenges. Health informatics journal, 50-58.

Lawn, S. &. (2010). Supporting self-management of chronic health conditions: common approaches. Patient education and counseling, 205-211.

Li, Q. W. (2010). User comments for news recommendation in forum-based social media. Information Sciences, 4929-4939.

Liu, Y. (2010). Social media tools as a learning resource. Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange (, 8.

Rice, E. S. (2016). Social media and digital technology use among Indigenous young people in Australia: a literature review. . International journal for equity in health, 81.

Ventola, C. L. (2014). Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 491.