Twitter as a Mental Health Support System for Students and Professionals in the Medical Field

• Main Authors: Liu, Lisa, Woo, Benjamin K P
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: JMIR Publications 2021-01-01
• Series: JMIR Medical Education
• Online Access: http://mededu.jmir.org/2021/1/e17598/

Twitter is a rapidly growing social media site that has greatly integrated itself in the lives of students and professionals in the medical field. While Twitter has been found to be very helpful in facilitating education, there is also great potential for its usage as a social support system. Social support has become more essential as society grapples with declining mental health, particularly in the medical sector. In our previous paper, we saw that Twitter provides a promising tool to learn more about the online conversation about dementia and, in particular, the supportive network that can be created. Inspired by this, we decided to investigate the potential of using Twitter as a support system for students and professionals in the medical field. In this paper, we explore the current state of mental health in the medical field and suggest practical implementation methods for using Twitter.