Sunday, March 23, 2014
U-Predict – Should we Use Social Medial to Determine Mental Health? (Air date 3/18/2014)
Researcher’s notes:
Doing U-Predict keeps me on my toes.
I don't want it to be a show about every crazy idea that comes along;
listeners and participants don’t want it to be a political recap – though some
political predictions are too tempting to pass up. I feel I've got a good topic when it touches
on current events and affects everyone involved – Reading Room or listening
audience. That’s what made this story so
perfect. I felt the first article I read
had to be a fluke; no one would really consider reviewing social media posts as
a barometer of the poster’s mental health.
I mean we all have the email we want back; the Tweet following a bad
day; the defriending after a rant on any topic under the sun. But someone actually takes these posts
seriously? Then I became shocked – there
were many articles written by professionals saying that social media posts
might be the best way to peek into the working of people’s minds and determine
if they need professional mental health!
The Reading Room for this show included: Ivy Lieberman, Mary Brown (TarotDactyl) Jean
Maurie Puhlman, Camille Kea, and ReeNee Cummins. We were joined by new reader DivineGoddessEnergy.
So we started by trying to determine if mental illness in
society was serious enough to trigger this activity. Tarot informed us something that most of us
already know. Mental illness is
everywhere. However, in most of society,
it is something that is ignored; the behavior is tolerated. In some cases, the behavior is celebrated –
it gives that person “character.” While
reading about this, the Tower appeared, and Jean Maurie interpreted her Tower
to mean: “there are problems and they are foolish if they think it’s not, people
are narrow about mental health help.” I
totally agreed with her interpretation.
Since I had a key job in an IT group (corporate webmaster),
I reminded everyone that electronic data – emails, web searches, etc. had been
used in the past in legal proceedings.
The advice that we gave employees, when I was working, was that you
didn’t put anything in electronic writing that you didn’t want presented in a
court of law. Other members of the
Reading Room who worked on government contracts had been given the same advice. There was a mention of the NSA spying on the
citizens, but we all agreed that we could do an entire different show on that.
The synchronistic cards we pulled summed up the problem
perfectly. The Fool was the first
synchronistic card that we pulled. One
meaning of the fool is stepping off into unknown territory. We are doing just that. In fact the Fool is a good card to define the
entire dynamic of Social Media. We have
never had the opportunity to gather in a concrete form of the thinking of so
many individuals. People may have had
negative, angry thoughts; they may have been love-sick about a neighbor and
wrote imaginary love notes encouraging them to run away. But because of lack of
understanding and the novelty of the platform people have done unwise things –
posting whatever they wanted under the guise of free speech. No one realizes that while speech is free,
there may be a terrible social or professional price one pays for
speaking/writing it.
The crux of the problem with this situation can be summed up
with The Hierophant. Again, there are
several layers of meaning that can be applied here. First, there is the stigma in American
society about mental illness. "It happens
in other families." "It is the person
sitting next to me – but it is not me or my family." "It is also easy to cure - there are “meetings”
for that." "More time in church will fix
you right up." Tarot Dactyl’s
interpretation was “there's a stalemate”.
Ivy’s interpretation echoed and added: “this will always be a battle. Taking control
of our own mental health helps, but a nation that takes care of its ill of mind
will move toward the future.”
What was interesting is that while we were talking about
this, Jean Maurie was pulling Angel cards.
We got Michael: “You can be free! Make a courageous choice to change
your situation. Not seeing things
clearly” So we need to move beyond The Hierophant and its institutional ideas
about mental health. We need to take
responsibility, first for ourselves. We
need to understand signs and symptoms and what are treatment options.
We also keyed off the
idea of becoming free and changing our situation. In other words, now is the time to think
before we type or Tweet. The Rotarians
have a code when it comes to sharing information: “1. Is it the truth? 2. Is it fair to
all concerned? 3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships? 4. Will it be
beneficial to all concerned?" There
are many forms and memes of this basic idea out there, but perhaps it is time
to bring them back into fashion.
Considering that our words are gathered, and stored, we may have no
choice: have our sanity questioned on a bad day, or we may choose to not participate in cyber-ranting.
We pulled the 5 and 9 of Swords in synchronicity. These cards are pretty dark. The five stands for vanquished or being vanquished, and the nine is about sorrow and
worry. There were underlying cards for
these synchronicities, and the message was “using social media as a measure of
mental health is a dangerous idea; the untrained may take it upon themselves to
interpret messages they see online.” We
also pulled some court cards in the suit of pentacles – this could indicate
someone who takes advantage of someone who as going through a bad period in
life, and charges a hefty fee for help.
TarotDactyl, who is a media coach, added that “the thing about social
media is that we are "broadcasting" and we don't seem to be aware of
that.”
The final cards we pulled in synchronicity were the Queen of
Cups and Empress. These cards were all
about compassion. This is the most
important message of the cards we pulled today.
We need to have compassion and concern towards all our friends – those
online as well as those we meet face to face.
We need to have compassion for ourselves when we are going through bad
times. Perhaps spilling our feelings in
cyberspace may not be our best answer; we may need to stand up when we need
help and seek it – there are many natural remedies to try as was discussed by
the Reading Room. We also can find
resources to recommend to friends when we see them going through hard times.
Jean’s angel card offered
us advice no matter what is happening: “(card
pulled - Page of Gabriel) - be energetic, brave, optimistic, and playful -
follow your passion. You are ready for
any challenge, opportunities for excitement and adventures. Oh, and think before you post…
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1 comments:
Love this!
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