NURS2103 Mental Health Professional Practice

SOCIAL MEDIA AND CLINICAL DEPRESSION

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Table of Contents

Introduction. 3

Hook Statement 3

Thesis statement 3

Main discussion. 3

Social Media. 3

Clinical Depression. 5

Conclusion. 7

References. 8

Introduction

Hook Statement

Various kinds of social media platforms are available nowadays in order to perform effective communication and the clinical depression is the most significant factor in the young generation.

Thesis statement

It is one of the major developments of modern technology. At the same time, various medical sectors and different types of health care facilities have been developed a lot. Depression is one of the health problems that are not a big deal nowadays. However, it is also found from many studies that depression can be created due to addiction as well as the misuse of various social media platforms. It means both of them are internally related to one another. This is going to be discussed here briefly in order to find a better understanding.

Main discussion

As it is said above that the use of social media platforms and depression can be connected with one another so both of them need to be understood closely. They are discussed below.

Social Media

Social media is a media or a channel that is used to transfer information, data or an essential message from one place to another or from one person to another. It is one of the most significant blessings of modern technology. Various kinds of social media platforms are available nowadays. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and many more are the top most popular platforms across the world. They work with the help of the internet and know no boundaries (Appel et al., 2020). That is the reason it helps its global audience to connect from one corner to another corner of the world. As a result, it has the capability to bring the world closer to the people. Here, people can create a virtual community across the world and can transfer the messages without any cost. As per the report of Worldometer, the entire population of the world is more than eight billion as of 2021 and the number of users of Facebook is more than three billion around the globe. So it has many advantages.

Figure 1: The image of the Facebook monthly active users

Source: (Orabi et al., 2018)

Various social media platforms can create worldwide connectivity very easily. As social media platforms work by using the internet and it has no boundaries they can create a worldwide community very easily. Here, the members of the community can connect in the daytime, night time or any time. People can make a video call, voice call and many more to send the message or receive. It makes the transformation of the data faster. Various social media platforms have the capability to make a small piece of news viral within a few minutes. People can use that news for the purpose of their education, for the purpose of their further experiment, for entertainment purposes and many more (Orabi et al., 2018). People can market, read books online, shop their choice able products and many more. So the platforms have much advantageous quality. On the other hand, various social media platforms have a few disadvantages also. one of the most significant problems of using social media platforms is maintaining privacy. It is seen through studies that people like to maintain their privacy but social media platforms are not the best places to do. Various kinds of cyberbullying can take place at any time. Not only that but various fake news can travel faster through social media platforms. These kinds of activities can hurt a person’s sensitivity, his mentality in many ways. Hacking is one of the worst problems here that can damage an individual financially as well as mentally or physically. So these also need to be considered.

Clinical Depression

Clinical depression is a serious illness of an individual. It is the state of mind of a person that presents various kinds of serious depressive symptoms along with mental disorders. So, clinical depression mainly refers to a mental illness. If a person shows constant hopelessness then it can be considered depression. Headache, stomach pain, fatigue, restlessness, significant weight loss and many more are the symptoms of depression (Keles, McCrae & Grealish, 2020). It can hamper the physical condition also of an individual. It can hamper sleeping habits, concentration and many more. As a result, a person fails to perform their activities effectively. The mental problem of depression is curable but it needs a complicated process of treatment. the treatment of mental disorders mainly starts with a prescription of antidepressants. Different types of antidepressants are available and it happens for many reasons.

Figure 2: The image of mental depression by age

Source: (Hou et al., 2020)

The various social media platform is one of them that can create mental disorder and depression. It is seen from many types of research that people can be victimized by using social media platforms negatively. As it is said before that people like to maintain their privacy which is very difficult to maintain on social media platforms so an individual can be depressed for the misuse of his private activities. Here, the mind of a person can distract very easily (Hou et al., 2020). As many people can come here together with much curiosity so it is very easy for an individual to distract his mind. As a result, the distracted mind can create different types of changes for his lifestyle. So, these are the connection between the uses of social media platforms that can create depressions for an individual. So every people and social media platform user should be aware of that to avoid mental depression.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be said that it is a time to use various social media platforms widely. It can be used in many ways. as various social media platforms bring the whole world at the fingertips of the people so various kinds of data and information or valuable messages can be conveyed easily through social media platforms. People can use it for rightful purposes. At the same time, they can misuse it also and this kind of misuse can create big diseases like unwanted depression. So people need to be very careful while using and conveying messages through social media platforms.

References

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2020). The future of social media in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(1), 79-95. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11747-019-00695-1

Hou, F., Bi, F., Jiao, R., Luo, D., & Song, K. (2020). Gender differences of depression and anxiety among social media users during the COVID-19 outbreak in China: a cross-sectional study. BMC public health, 20(1), 1-11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09738-7

Keles, B., McCrae, N., & Grealish, A. (2020). A systematic review: the influence of social media on depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adolescents. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25(1), 79-93. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1590851

Orabi, A. H., Buddhitha, P., Orabi, M. H., & Inkpen, D. (2018, June). Deep learning for depression detection of Twitter users. In Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology: From Keyboard to Clinic (pp. 88-97). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18653/v1/W18-0609