If COVID-19 is not hard enough as a global pandemic, it has opened up the gates to mental health issues around the globe too. With global mental health problems rising up, medical professionals are cooperating with social media to raise awareness for people by providing helpful resources they will need.
Synchronous with the World Mental Health Day, Facebook announced the start of a new Emotional Health resource center.
“We’ve been working with leading authorities around the world — like NAMI, Kids Help Phone and It’s OK to Talk — to invest in the critical areas of mental health support, including handling financial stress, parenting support, coping with loss and grief, managing substance use and taking care of overall emotional health. Today we’re introducing Emotional Health, a centralized resource center on the Facebook app with tips and information from leading experts.”
The new feature will make it easier for people to connect to the professional support they need when they struggle with mental health problems. Facebook and mental health experts cooperated to create a feature that will give real value in this hard time. They will keep expanding the resources and information they provide as they are learning more about the present needs.
The new mental health available (or soon to be available) resources so far are:
- World Health Organization Digital Stress Management Guide on WhatsApp
- WHO sticker pack on Messenger
- Crisis Support Over Messenger
- Mental Well-Being Guides on Instagram
- Peace of Mind with Taraji on Facebook Watch
Additionally, Facebook is also heavily investing in research to understand better how social media influences our mental health. Facebook has teamed with The Aspen Institute to enhance the understanding of loneliness, technology, social connection, and how they are all crossed together. Also, they published the first report summary about their results and findings.
Facebook will keep working with mental health experts and doing researches to identify the returning point between spiraling of toxic feelings and feeling good social media activity.
A lot of people see social media as a main driver of increasing mental health problems. However, with benefits like connection and communication through long distances can argue the opposite easily. We may know the advantages and disadvantages, yet it fact, Facebook is not going anywhere. At least anytime soon. We can take at least comfort in knowing that the company confronts these issues and tries to solve it.
