Social networks aspire to connect people, which is a noble but naive goal. When we uncritically accept connection as a good thing, we overlook difficult, important questions: Are some forms of virtual communication more nourishing than others? Might some in fact be harmful? Is it possible that Facebook, for instance, leaves some people feeling more lonely? No one knows for sure. We tend to build things first and worry about the effects they have on us later.
Robert Morris is taking the opposite approach. Starting with the desired effect of helping people deal with depression, he developed Panoply, a crowdsourced website for improving mental health.
So begins this week’s Reading.
This is not your typical selection. Though the disease discussed is depression, the treatment involves social networks, not sertraline. The article is well written, but it doesn’t appear in the pages of World Psychiatry but Wired. The article details therapy, but with a focus on apps, not Adler. CBT is important, but crowdsourcing is talked about more than cognitive distortions.
Welcome to psychiatry in the 21st century.
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