How the internet can help your mental health
Our digital natives get online help to overcome depression, anxiety and other challenges, writes Tanya Sweeney
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the relationship between young people and technolog y is complicated. Amid the headlines about selfie culture, cyberbullying and social media, a simple truism gets lost: when it comes to managing one’s mental health, technolog y can be friend as well as foe.
Today, a conference hosted by ReachOut.com and Mental Health Reform will highlight the potential roles of technolog y in revolutionising mental health.
The Dublin event will explore how different types of digital technology — including mobile apps and ‘blended therapy’ that combines face-to-face therapy with online support — can be used by people with mental health dif ficulties.
“People are often wary of technolog y, but we’re getting to showcase the developments in tech that are empowering users to manage their own mental heath,” explains Naoise Kelly, head of digital and communications with ReachOut.com, a ser vice providing mental health support to young people in Ireland.
“We know that existing mental health ser vices are hammered and that can be a good thing and attributed to a breakdown in stigma, but using technolog y differs the traditional mental health service model and gives power back to the user. Technolog y gives people f lexibility and it meets them where they’re at.”
For many young people, accessing technolog y works by providing much needed information and a sense of community amid uncertain times.
Terenure native Ciara Margolis (22) admits that as a child shee was “a bit of a scaredy-cat”,at”, but as she grew older,er, her anxiety began to worsen.
“I definitelynitely had an existentialal crisis or two when I wasas tiny, but the Leavingng Cert was the first timeime it became apparent that what I was experiencingcing was not normal. (For the exams) I was even put in a special room because
I was having havi panic att attacks.” Despite this, Ciara Cia won a spot spoon her drea dream course, Comm Communications at DCU DCU. And yet her panic attacks failed tot abate. “To b be honest, part of it was my lifestyle — I was just doing that college
drinking thing,” she admits. “It’s part of the Irish culture, drinking from a lack of knowing what else to do, but I couldn’t handle it as much as my friends could. I just remember it was a really confusing age and I felt kind of misunderstood.”
While Ciara acknowledges that googling health symptoms can lead many down a wrong path, finding words like ‘anxiety’, ‘panic disorder’ and ‘panic attacks’ came as a relief. “I was reading other people’s experiences and to feel like I wasn’t completely crazy, or that I didn’t have a heart problem was a huge relief.”
Among the testimonials that Ciara found online was that of the blogging superstar Zoella, who regularly posts YouTube videos about her own mental health challenges. “People online, and then finding articles online, provided me with advice on what to do in real life,” says Ciara. “What really helped me was knowing I wasn’t alone. Usually, there’s such a pressure to be brave and not show others your vulnerability.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by student Dean O’Reilly (18) who, as a young gay man growing up in Meath, felt he was lacking a sense of community.
“I never saw myself represented in the local area or at school,” recalls Dean ( lef t) . “I felt I had to watch what I said or monitor how I behaved in front of certain people. It resulted in quite a bit of distress and anxiety. I think a lot of it was the general state of not really living as my authentic self, and it wasn’t until I looked back that I noticed how unhappy I was.”
Dean happened upon Reach Out and started to volunteer with the organisation’s Youth Support Network. Through it, he
came into contact both online and off line with a lot of like-minded people.
“It’s not a requirement to be struggling with something but a lot of people motivated to join the Youth Support Network have had personal experience with struggle,” he says. “It’s funny, the decline into unhappiness was so gradual I barely noticed it, but the ef fects of finding a community were instantaneous.”
Young people, Dean notes, are particularly vulnerable to this feeling of isolation. “It’s easy to feel like no one understands you,” he notes. “Even if you see that people have a certain condition, you think to yourself, ‘yes, but the intricacies of this condition are differentt for me’.”
There are many reasons whyy Ireland’s youngung people feel comfortable finding the answers to theirheir mental healthth questions withith technolog y. As digital natives, they are entirely used to being themselves (or as close as it ’s possible to get to being themselves) online. With much of their lives happening through their smartphones or tablet, it standsstan to reason that they migmight seek help for their mentalm health challengechallenges online too. “HumaHuman connection is at the root of good mental healthh and we want to eemphasise that thethese are additionadditional tools that can facilitate good mental health,” says KKelly. “We want to give the power back to the ser vice user.
“We cant ignore the negative side [of technolog y] and people’s dependence on social media,” she adds. “It’s having an impact that can’t be ignored. We advocate for an increased sense of mental health literacy, as well as digital literacy, so that people can manage their relationship with technolog y better. And it’s not just for young people — social media is ever yone’s shiny new toy and we’ve all been sucked in to some extent.”
Ciara, meanwhile, acknowledges the measures implemented by Government to bring mental heath awareness to light, but says they “have a long way to go”.
“Preventative Government programmes that can be shared online, and something like free access to yoga, art and dance classes in the area, would be great,” she says. “I think the Government tends to zone in on sport as a way to address mental health issues, but not ever yone is sporty.”
Gaining much-needed information on her condition, as well as the realisation that she is not alone, has resulted in an instance where Ciara ( lef t) can now control her panic attacks if ever they arise.
“I’m definitely a lot better, but panic disorder isn’t something that goes away completely,” she says. “And it happened because of me being so open to the idea of getting help for myself in the first place.”
The fifth annual Technology For Wellbeing International Conference takes place today at the Hilton Hotel, Charlemont Place, in Dublin. For more information, see http://ie.reachout. com/t4wb17.