(CLOSED) Behavioral Health at the National Conference on Health Communications, Marketing and Media
Leveraging the collective knowledge and experience of attendees and presenters at the 2011 National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media is critical for SAMHSA as one of co-chairs of the event.
With the goal of providing a forum for conference participants to help us think through how new communication tools and approaches can help us further progress toward SAMHSA’s Public Awareness and Support Strategic Initiative (http://store.samhsa.gov/product/SMA11-4629), we are asking for your input on the question below. If you have more than one idea, please add it to the list and, if you are on Twitter or Facebook, let everyone else here know that they should participate.
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Stigma
Stigma needs to be addressed more in the media, we need to normalize mental illness and substance use. I suggest you continue with the lose the labels idea.
1 vote -
In physical health we counter corporate marketing but in mental health we are spreading it. (pharma)
Most of the other social messaging work described in the conference was about countering tobacco marketing or marketing of syrupy drinks, or marketing of alcohol. Instead, in mental health social media, most of the governmental agencies and the mainstream mental health advocacy organizations like NAMI, DBSA, or Mental Health America instead do their work to spread the pharma industry line that “All psychiatric medications are effective and well-tolerated.” The Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, one of the mental health social media groups that heavily pushes diagnoses and labels, had a blog about how kids can get themselves diagnosed even when…
13 votes -
Calling mental health behavioral health is inaccurate and insulting.
I know that this is a compromise mental health social media term to include substance use as well, but I never chose to have my emotional difficulties that landed me in the psychiatric system. I never “behaved” in a way that got me sick, except that I had to learn a few behaviors to make me well, like exercising and eating well. Substance use may be a behavior, but mental health issues are not. I tell you what is behavioral health – heart disease. I tell you what is behavioral health – Type 2 diabetes. Those issues directly come from…
15 votes -
Not too many people know what a social entrepreneur is.
Beverley Schwartz from the Ashoka foundation did this incredible inspiring presentation to sum up the conference and asked the 600 or so people left if they thought of themselves as “HealthCare communicators.” Most of the hands went up. Then she asked if they though of themselves as “Social media experts.” Only about half of the hands stayed up. Then she said, “How many of you are social entrepreneurs?” Only about ten hands went up. Then “How of you want to be social entrepreneurs?” About twenty hands went up. Well the Unreasonable Institute has 10 characteristics of a successful social entreprenuer,…
2 votes -
The Twitter side stream was good for connecting and documenting the conference.
I met people via Twitter, found people recommending presentations by their friend. I saw what other people were getting out of the conference. I was able to see a link to download the entire twitter feed for the whole conference. It was the “meta-conference” going on.
1 vote -
Policy change and cultural change for young people must have completely different mental health soci
One of the most well thought out and researched programs that I heard was from Jeff Jordan, who started Rescue Social Change Group when he was 17. He said that you can either affect policy change, or cultural change. Policy change can be done by the “clean cut, preppy, ambitious” young people that are good at talking to adults, interested in volunteering for us, and want to make a difference for other young people. But these kids are not at risk.
The at risk kids are “cool kids, highly interested in what their peers think, and very involved with youth…
3 votes -
SAMHSA is really pessimistic about the long term growth of mental health disability.
SAMSHA is forecasting that mental health “disorders” will be the leading cause of disability by the year 2020. This doesn’t need to happen. If we create systems that promote full recovery, we can eliminate many mental health disorders. The Open Dialogue method in Finland has almost completely emptied their mental hospitals. We can greatly reduce disability with effective treatments. If disability is increasing, then our current treatments must not be that effective.
8 votes -
SAMHSA is really pushing screening hard.
Given the current huge use of psychiatric medications in our country, and the growing doubts about their long term effectiveness, this can be a huge problem. For every story that SAMHSA tells about people that have benefitted by being diagnosed and “treated” by the mental health system, I can give them three stories about people who learned that the diagnosis and medications themselves were the most damaging parts of all. I told Mark Weber from SAMHSA and a woman from the Carter Center, “As long as we’re not being honest that mental health treatment harms some people, we’re not going…
8 votes -
SAMHSA needs to conduct a national review of the long term effectiveness of psych medications
Currently more and more research is starting to question this assumption that has gone into mental health care for the last 30 years. We need to have a national, open and honest debate about this topic. SAMHSA is ideally positioned to conduct this debate since they listen to more recovery advocates than other organizations like NIMH who try to ignore our presence. I asked during the opening plenary, “What do we do if we’ve been giving out a social media message and it turns out to be wrong?”
The answer was, “You have to be honest. When the facts change,…
33 votes -
5 votes
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Social media is about making connections and a non-threatening way to connect with all populuations.
Social media creates an environment where individuals who are challenged by other forms of communicaion can connect with individuals (both their peers and professionals) and organizations.
8 votes
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