A practical guide to social media in mental health practice

This review highlights a huge range of predictors of treatment response that varying widely in their clinical utility.

This new 30-page guide (PDF) is a must read for any health and social care professionals who are thinking about getting more involved with social media.

Twitter remains a terrifying prospect for many professionals working in health and social care, but in my experience it’s very rare for someone to actually give it a go, spend some time exploring what it can do and then say that they don’t want to continue.

The authors of the guide (Victorias: Betton and Tomlinson @VictoriaBetton @nlightspr) are both active and joyful users of social media and this shines through in their very practical and useful report.

For many of us, social media is becoming an essential tool for our every day working life

For many of us, social media is becoming an essential tool for our every day working life

It’s pitched at the novice and includes an introduction to social media and some very clear explanations about the different websites and techniques that you need to get up and running.

There are a number of case studies that illustrate the power and reach of Twitter, Facebook, online communities, mobile apps and blogs.

The authors themselves highlight the fact that the guide will probably be out of date very soon, but for the time being it is an excellent introduction to a topic that is straightforward for many early-adopters, but a real mountain to climb for others.

If you’re a Twitter-virgin, here’s the place to start. If you’re a social media guru already, download this guide and give it to those troublesome friends who’ve been resisting getting involved for years. This may just persuade them to take the existential leap of faith!

Helen Bevan, Chief of Service Transformation at the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, sums it up nicely in her introduction:

Through social media I get access to updates on the latest thinking in my field as soon as they are published and have discussions and solve problems with some amazing people. One of the most powerful aspects of social media is that it cuts across organisational barriers and hierarchies; you can connect with a voluntary advocate as easily as a chief executive as easily as a clinical team member.

Link

Betton V and Tomlinson V. Social media in mental health practice: online network tools for recovery and living well (PDF). Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, March 2013.

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Andre Tomlin

André Tomlin is an Information Scientist with 20 years experience working in evidence-based healthcare. He's worked in the NHS, for Oxford University and since 2002 as Managing Director of Minervation Ltd, a consultancy company who do clever digital stuff for charities, universities and the public sector. Most recently André has been the driving force behind the Mental Elf and the National Elf Service; an innovative digital platform that helps professionals keep up to date with simple, clear and engaging summaries of evidence-based research. André is a Trustee at the Centre for Mental Health and an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London Division of Psychiatry. He lives in Bristol, surrounded by dogs, elflings and lots of woodland!

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