

If You Don’t Have a Therapist, Can Instagram Help?August 1, 2019 |
Therapists are now using the platform as a way to offer support to their followers – just don’t call it ‘therapy’
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If You Don’t Have a Therapist, Can Instagram Help?August 1, 2019 |
Therapists are now using the platform as a way to offer support to their followers – just don’t call it ‘therapy’
Therapists are now using the platform as a way to offer support to their followers – just don’t call it ‘therapy’
In 2017, California therapist Lisa Olivera made her first post to her Instagram account. “I am here to share bits of wisdom, tools for well-being, and reflection on topics related to self-worth, vulnerability, shame/guilt …” she wrote beneath a selfie.
Today, her feed is followed by over 215,000 people, and represents just one of a growing subset of Instagram accounts run by licensed therapists and used to share mental health self-care tips and food for thought.
Last month, this group was shaken when American media coverage of the movement referred to it as “Insta-therapy”, with one outlet extrapolating that in the future, therapy could mean “scrolling through Instagram rather than sitting in an office”.
…continue reading ‘If You Don’t Have a Therapist, Can Instagram Help?’
As regulatory professionals tasked with protecting research subjects, it’s important to understand the unique risks and benefits of social media use for research
As regulatory professionals tasked with protecting research subjects, it’s important to understand the unique risks and benefits of social media use for research
Approximately 80% of the US population has a social media account. In 2019 it’s estimated that world-wide there will be around 2.77 billion social media users. Social media can be a powerful research tool for recruiting subjects and for conducting research. As regulatory professionals tasked with protecting research subjects, it’s important to understand the unique risks and benefits of social media use for research.
Luckily, at PRIM&R’s 2018 Advancing Ethical Research Conference (AER18), there was a session devoted solely to the complex issues related to research on social media. Three key issues were discussed at the session, including how IRBs can assess ethical issues related to subject recruitment via social media and ensure subject respect and privacy; use of social media platforms as a source of research data without eroding public trust in research; and how social media use by subjects can impact study integrity.
…continue reading ‘Research and Social Media: Finding Subjects and Keeping Trust’
Image: By Ibrahim.ID – Own work based on:file:Twitter Logo Mini.svgfile:Google plus icon.svgfile:Instagram Shiny Icon.svgfile:Logo Youtube.svg, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52245675
Plastic surgeons’ Instagram accounts of the weekend trip didn’t note the drug company’s sponsorship, which some ethicists say should be disclosed
Plastic surgeons’ Instagram accounts of the weekend trip didn’t note the drug company’s sponsorship, which some ethicists say should be disclosed
Top plastic surgeons and cosmetic dermatologists gathered at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun one weekend this month to learn about a wrinkle-smoothing injection, Jeuveau, that goes on sale this week.
Jeuveau’s manufacturer, Evolus, billed the event as an advisory board meeting. But it also appeared to double as a lavish launch party for Jeuveau, which the company is hoping will compete against Botox in a crowded market that also includes two other products.
More than a dozen top doctors gushed about the event on social media — using the company’s preferred hashtag, #newtox — without disclosing that Evolus had paid for their trips. The Federal Trade Commission requires social media users to disclose relationships with companies when promoting their products on social media, which has emerged as a potent platform. Medical experts also said the tactics carried echoes of an earlier, anything-goes era of pharmaceutical marketing that the industry largely abandoned after a series of scandals and billion-dollar fines.
The Internet Has a Cancer-Faking ProblemMay 6, 2019 |
“Munchausen by internet” is rattling tight-knit online support groups
“Munchausen by internet” is rattling tight-knit online support groups
When Stephany Angelacos was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in 2016, she immediately turned to the internet for support. Online, there are numerous groups and forums where people dealing with cancer can share their experiences. Angelacos researched her disease and its treatments, and then, inspired by how knowledgeable everyone was, decided to found her own invite-only breast-cancer Facebook group that same year.
Today, this group has grown to 1,700 members. About a third have a metastatic or terminal diagnosis. Others are family members or medical professionals who share advice. The members comfort one another, organize fundraisers, and coordinate visits to those who are alone at the end of their lives. Angelacos, who has now completed active treatment, oversees many of these efforts.
Over the past year, one of the group’s more active and popular members was Marissa Marchand. When she joined in 2017, according to group members, Marchand said she was a terminally ill, grieving single mom. She posted pictures of herself bald from chemotherapy and wearing an IV drip. She quickly became close to many women in the group, and received an outpouring of sympathy, money, and gifts—including expensive wigs—to help defray the costs of medical care and raising her family.
…continue reading ‘The Internet Has a Cancer-Faking Problem’
Dr. Hasan Shanawani was overcome by frustration. So, last week he picked up his cellphone and began sharing on Twitter his family’s enraging experiences with the U.S. health care system
Dr. Hasan Shanawani was overcome by frustration. So, last week he picked up his cellphone and began sharing on Twitter his family’s enraging experiences with the U.S. health care system
It was an act of defiance — and desperation. Like millions of people who are sick or old and the families who care for them, this physician was disheartened by the health care system’s complexity and its all-too-frequent absence of caring and compassion.
Shanawani, a high-ranking physician at the Department of Veterans Affairs, had learned the day before that his 83-year-old father, also a physician, was hospitalized in New Jersey with a spinal fracture. But instead of being admitted as an inpatient, his dad was classified as an “observation care” patient — an outpatient status that Shanawani knew could have unfavorable consequences, both medically and financially.
On the phone with a hospital care coordinator, Shanawani pressed for an explanation. Why was his dad, who had metastatic stage 4 prostate cancer and an unstable spine, not considered eligible for a hospital admission? Why had an emergency room doctor told the family the night before that his father met admission criteria?
…continue reading ‘NAVIGATING AGING Even Doctors Can’t Navigate Our ‘Broken Health Care System’’
thumb image via KHN – Caitlin Hilyar/KHN illustration/Getty Images
Rejection KillsApril 30, 2019 |
The brain makes no distinction between a broken bone and an aching heart. That’s why social exclusion needs a health warning
The brain makes no distinction between a broken bone and an aching heart. That’s why social exclusion needs a health warning
The psychologist Naomi Eisenberger describes herself as a mutt of a scientist. Never quite fitting the mould of the fields she studied – psychobiology, health psychology, neuroscience – she took an unusual early interest in what you might call the emotional life of the brain. As a doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Eisenberger found it curious that we often describe being rejected in terms of physical pain: ‘My heart was broken’, ‘I felt crushed’, ‘He hurt my feelings’, ‘It was like a slap in the face’. More than metaphors, these expressions seem to capture something essential about how we feel in a way that we can’t convey directly. And you’ll find similar ones not just in English but in languages all over the world. Eisenberger wondered why. Could there be a deeper connection between physical and emotional pain?
In a landmark experiment in 2003, Eisenberger and her colleagues had test subjects strapped with virtual-reality headsets. Peering through goggles, the participants could see their own hand and a ball, plus two cartoon characters – the avatars of fellow participants in another room. With the press of a button, each player could toss the ball to another player while the researchers measured their brain activity through fMRI scans. In the first round of CyberBall – as the game became known – the ball flew back and forth just as you’d expect, but pretty soon the players in the second room started making passes only to each other, completely ignoring the player in the first room. In reality, there were no other players: just a computer programmed to ‘reject’ each participant so that the scientists could see how exclusion – what they called ‘social pain’ – affects the brain.
…continue reading ‘Rejection Kills’
image via flickr Some rights reserved by Simon Matzinger
The Privacy ProjectApril 15, 2019 |
Boundaries of privacy are in dispute, and its future is in doubt. Citizens, politicians and business leaders are asking if societies are making the wisest tradeoffs. The Times is embarking on this project to explore the technology and where it’s taking us, and to convene debate about how it can best help realize human potential
Boundaries of privacy are in dispute, and its future is in doubt. Citizens, politicians and business leaders are asking if societies are making the wisest tradeoffs. The Times is embarking on this project to explore the technology and where it’s taking us, and to convene debate about how it can best help realize human potential
Companies and governments are gaining new powers to follow people across the internet and around the world, and even to peer into their genomes. The benefits of such advances have been apparent for years; the costs — in anonymity, even autonomy — are now becoming clearer. The boundaries of privacy are in dispute, and its future is in doubt. Citizens, politicians and business leaders are asking if societies are making the wisest tradeoffs. The Times is embarking on this monthslong project to explore the technology and where it’s taking us, and to convene debate about how it can best help realize human potential.
…continue reading ‘The Privacy Project’
Other sensitive topics in 2018 include a vaccine scandal and a physician jailed for criticizing traditional Chinese medicine
Other sensitive topics in 2018 include a vaccine scandal and a physician jailed for criticizing traditional Chinese medicine
The controversial topic of the first babies born from gene-edited embryos was one of the most censored on Chinese social media last year, according to researchers at the University of Hong Kong.
On 11 February, media researchers Marcus Wang and Stella Fan posted an article to the news website Global Voices in which they describe a censorship project they are part of called WeChatscope.
WeChatscope, they say, tracks articles that have been deleted from 4000 public accounts on WeChat, China’s most popular social-media platform, which has an average of 500,000 users a day. The project preserves deleted posts in a database.
…continue reading ”Gene-Edited Babies’ Is One of the Most Censored Topics on Chinese Social Media’
Image via Flickr Some rights reserved by (^_^) wellwin