Latha K, Meena K S, Pravitha M R, Dasgupta Madhuporna, Chaturvedi S K
Department of Mental Health Education, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
J Educ Health Promot. 2020 May 28;9:124. doi: 10.4103/jehp.jehp_90_20. eCollection 2020.
Social media platforms are progressively developing as a rich source of mass communication. Increasing mental health awareness with the help of social media can be a good initiative to reach out to a large number of people in a short time frame. This study was conducted to understand the usefulness of social media platforms for health promotion.
It was a qualitative study to evaluate the effectiveness of social media platforms in hosting health promotion campaigns in the field of mental health, which was observed over 5 months from May to September 2019 to reach more people for effective information dissemination. The campaigns were as follows (1) The Buddies for Suicide Prevention: an online campaign to create awareness about suicide prevention. The campaign included script writing, slogan writing, poster making, and short films making, organized for the general public who were interested to take part; (2) The #Iquitobacco was a 21-day campaign with an idea of tobacco cessation in the community, conducted among social media viewers who were willing to participate; and (3) #Migrainethepainfultruth was yet another campaign conducted among the social media viewers who were interested to participate. All the campaigns were conducted using two famous social media platforms commonly used by young adults. Descriptive statistics such as frequency and proportions were computed for the number of likes and shares.
The Facebook and Instagram posts concerning all the campaigns brought about a considerable amount of reach to the targeted population. After the campaigns, the page reached to around 10.3 k people (both fans and nonfans).
Use of social media to conduct mental health campaigns is an effective initiative as one can reach out to several people over a short time period. There is an increasing trend in the awareness of mental health with the effective use of digital media as a platform for disseminating information.
社交媒体平台正逐渐发展成为大众传播的丰富来源。借助社交媒体提高心理健康意识是在短时间内接触大量人群的良好举措。本研究旨在了解社交媒体平台对健康促进的作用。
这是一项定性研究，旨在评估社交媒体平台在开展心理健康领域健康促进活动方面的有效性，研究于2019年5月至9月进行了5个月，以覆盖更多人群进行有效信息传播。活动如下：（1）预防自杀伙伴：一项提高对自杀预防认识的线上活动。该活动包括剧本创作、标语撰写、海报制作和短片制作，面向有兴趣参与的公众组织开展；（2）#我戒烟了是一项为期21天的活动，旨在社区中宣传戒烟理念，在愿意参与的社交媒体用户中开展；（3）#偏头痛的痛苦真相是在有兴趣参与的社交媒体用户中开展的另一项活动。所有活动均使用年轻人常用的两个著名社交媒体平台进行。对点赞数和分享数计算了频率和比例等描述性统计数据。
所有活动在脸书和照片墙上发布的内容都相当广泛地覆盖了目标人群。活动结束后，页面覆盖了约1.03万人（包括粉丝和非粉丝）。
利用社交媒体开展心理健康活动是一项有效的举措，因为可以在短时间内接触到很多人。通过有效利用数字媒体作为信息传播平台，心理健康意识呈上升趋势。
