Mental Health Understanding and Misunderstanding of Mental Illness in Media

[Asclepius]

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/trending/algorithm-monitors-social-media-mental-health-issues-risk-1.3471223


Happened upon the above link/information ; regarding online, monitoring of social-media activity and how, somehow, by using algorithms, this will help to define unhealthy behaviour that may indicate 'mental-illness'.

A Canadian University is being funded for this nonsense.

This projects posits the notion that diagnosing Mental Illness simply requires quantitative analysis; by monitoring social-media activity. Personally, I found it disturbing for many reasons and it begs several questions; concerning civil liberties etc.

1] How can an undefined agency, legitimately and professionally 'diagnose' anyone solely, from their online activity - can evidence of this be authenticated? What professional psychiatric bodies/institutions have granted authority to the agencies involved in these activities and on what evidential and professional, basis has this been authorised?

2] What rights do professionals, within the scientific community/psychiatric/psychological community, have access to, legally? - in order to carry out online-research on ordinary citizens?

3] How could we ensure that this information, or gleaning of this information fulfills the right to privacy of the individual; with regards to protection of their personal data?

4]What constitutes this research and what specific, proof from this/these organisations would be made publicly, evident to demonstrate the legitimacy of this activity for any humanitarian/social purpose?

5] What politicians or government, officials; serving the people, would make themselves available to provide evidence and information, regarding the intricacies, nature and purpose of this activity; with respect to the rights of the electorate?

6.] Who would be responsible for licensing this activity to be carried out and on what basis - what evidence of transparency would these agencies be responsible for; regarding their activities being printed/published and where would a citizen be granted access to records dealing with the access, by a third party, to the investigation of the individual's personal, details; as was carried out by psychological investigators?

What are your thoughts on this issue?

 

[JessFR]

I think people are retaded.

Bitching and crying about their precious privacy then turning around and putting their every moment of their every day online for any member of the public to access, then when some of those members of the public are researchers or whomever, working themselves into a paranoid frenzy.

Dont wanna be potentially involved in studies of this nature? You don't even need to stop using facebook, sounds to me from what that article said all you gotta do is get off your lazy ass and set your privacy settings to stop allowing just anyone to view it.

Or you could just not use facebook twitter and other scourges of mass retardation, I don't and somehow manage to not fade away into nonexistence by virtue of not having made everyone aware of what I had for dinner last night.

 

[manboychef]

I am with jess. I stopped using facebook, never used twitter or any of that stuff. I look at social media as starting out as a good idea, but recently it has become an invasive force in quite a few peoples lives.

 

[Ligaturd]

It is an amazing tool to study human behavior, or atleast the nnarcissistic side which we display on social media. It is an amazing research tool for a variety of reasons, some benign, others pretty nefarious. We are social creatures and the stimulation and the superficial sense of wellbeing we get from "recognition" by complete strangers just presses all the right buttons for most people. We all want to be accepted and liked and we trade our privacy for this artificial affection. It's completely illogical to do all of these things. We have a biological and emotional need for socialization and things that pacify our insecurities, that reassure ourselves. It's a synthetic embrace and it stimulates us and we get rewards from it. I understand why people use it, I understand why it is a problem and I also understand the denial that people experience when they say their privacy is being taken away from them after they themselves have put it out there for the world to see.

It can be really unhealthy and it is for most people. I stopped using it after I realozed that it was extremely unhealthy and was making my social problems much worse. It's like any other potentially self destructive behavior, there are ways to use it responsibly and carefully and it takes a lot of objective honesty to realize when you are abusing it and it is abusing you and you are putting yourself in a compromising position, seemingly unaware driven by the neurological rewards you get from it. It is a lot like drug use/addiction.

 

[SixBuckets]

1] How can an undefined agency, legitimately and professionally 'diagnose' anyone solely, from their online activity - can evidence of this be authenticated? What professional psychiatric bodies/institutions have granted authority to the agencies involved in these activities and on what evidential and professional, basis has this been authorised?

Big data is terrifying and amazing. I use an analytics program on my work Twitter followers that tells me how they vote, what industry they work in and where they sit in the management chain, what products they spend most money on, their gender and age, their dating status, the topics they most want to read about, and way more.

2] What rights do professionals, within the scientific community/psychiatric/psychological community, have access to, legally? - in order to carry out online-research on ordinary citizens?

You have no right to privacy when you're talking about information you have voluntarily posted on the public internet.

3] How could we ensure that this information, or gleaning of this information fulfills the right to privacy of the individual; with regards to protection of their personal data?

Does this project actually analyse personal data? Or does it analyse public social media content and profiles?

4]What constitutes this research and what specific, proof from this/these organisations would be made publicly, evident to demonstrate the legitimacy of this activity for any humanitarian/social purpose?


5] What politicians or government, officials; serving the people, would make themselves available to provide evidence and information, regarding the intricacies, nature and purpose of this activity; with respect to the rights of the electorate?

Sorry, I'm not sure what these points mean.

6.] Who would be responsible for licensing this activity to be carried out and on what basis - what evidence of transparency would these agencies be responsible for; regarding their activities being printed/published and where would a citizen be granted access to records dealing with the access, by a third party, to the investigation of the individual's personal, details; as was carried out by psychological investigators?

The transparency would be a matter for the university ethics committee and the access to the records by citizens would be a question of where and how the authors published the research.

 

[Moreaux]

I don't find it remotely disturbing, as people's privacy rights are not being violated. It's common knowledge that anything you post online, whether you keep your profile public or to just friends, stands the risk of being widely disseminated. People over share on social media, why shouldn't that info be utilized to learn more about the human psyche? Seriously, if somebody is broadcasting all of their family's dirty laundry or other drama, to their entire distribution list on social media, isn't that indicative of a mental health issue? I believe it is - normal healthy people do not behave this way. I find some of the content my Facebook "friends" post to be disturbing, particularly the private nature of the subject matter and the fact that they are broadcasting it to 1000+ friends. Humans are inquisitive and the technology being leveraged to conduct these studies is so recent that much larger data samplings can be taken - I think it's fascinating. It is within each individual's power to choose if they want to participate in social media, Internet forums, etc. Sharing this information is totally elective.

 

[Ligaturd]

Facebook is a good platform to bring out peoples inner narcissist. I stopped using it for this very reason. But I guess it was a humbling learning experience allowing some objective realizations of self.

 

[Asclepius]

Facebook is a good platform to bring out peoples inner narcissist. I stopped using it for this very reason. But I guess it was a humbling learning experience allowing some objective realizations of self.

Depends on how you use it - like most things; a person isn't in any way bound, or obliged to follow the popular, consensus regarding social rules/social media; unless they conform to it. Btw I wholeheartedly, agree with your perception, in the respect, that most have used it in the manner of it's inception; where Zuckerberg wanted to rate females on their appearance - I personally, hate obeying popular consensus unless it appeals to my personal value system

 

[Asclepius]

I don't find it remotely disturbing, as people's privacy rights are not being violated. It's common knowledge that anything you post online, whether you keep your profile public or to just friends, stands the risk of being widely disseminated. People over share on social media, why shouldn't that info be utilized to learn more about the human psyche? Seriously, if somebody is broadcasting all of their family's dirty laundry or other drama, to their entire distribution list on social media, isn't that indicative of a mental health issue? I believe it is - normal healthy people do not behave this way. I find some of the content my Facebook "friends" post to be disturbing, particularly the private nature of the subject matter and the fact that they are broadcasting it to 1000+ friends. Humans are inquisitive and the technology being leveraged to conduct these studies is so recent that much larger data samplings can be taken - I think it's fascinating. It is within each individual's power to choose if they want to participate in social media, Internet forums, etc. Sharing this information is totally elective.

You should. I agree with some of your comment but you state:

''people's privacy rights are not being violated. It's common knowledge that anything you post online, whether you keep your profile public or to just friends, stands the risk of being widely disseminated.''

Common knowledge of privacy violations, does not equate to Rights to privacy. If you are aware of your rights being violated, this does not automatically, mean it is a legitimate, action that is being carried out -

Consider, this scenario; where a person is about to kill you.

They tell you first/you were informed of it beforehand (you lucky bunny!- phew!) 'How greatful and clever am I', you think ''they informed me first so, my life is spared AND more importantly, I took heed of the warning (GO me - fuck the poor asshole that doesn't pay attention- he deserves it!) Pity the fool who doesn't listen to the warning; threat to life must be legitimate.''

This is how people get conditioned into submission and complacency of thought and action. I understand that some powers seem mammoth in their capacity but everything has an achilles heel and one must be creative and not give-up to consensus, lest one becomes a zombie.


Personal freedoms should be fought for - especially, at their inception (especially in this case - which probably wont effect me but nevertheless, as a human and the potentiality of it effecting BL'ers on here; it effects me); especially when it is concerned with psychological freedoms and freedom of thought. If apathy is the adopted attitude - then we become the undead. Life is too short not to exercise your mind, heart and will. Fascination is the impetus to question and take action; not passively observe and admire those who have more power than you. Fuck that.

 

[Asclepius]

Big data is terrifying and amazing. I use an analytics program on my work Twitter followers that tells me how they vote, what industry they work in and where they sit in the management chain, what products they spend most money on, their gender and age, their dating status, the topics they most want to read about, and way more.



You have no right to privacy when you're talking about information you have voluntarily posted on the public internet.

Privacy (National security and marketing-wise,) is one thing. Being diagnosed psychologically, by a professional based on posts is a different situation entirely.

Does this project actually analyse personal data? Or does it analyse public social media content and profiles?

Who knows - it's vague and for those reasons, it is even more odd. Not to mention, that any country that deems; judging the condition of someones' mental health, legitimately, based on online activity - sounds bat-sht Donald Trump, crazy and power-hungry.

The transparency would be a matter for the university ethics committee and the access to the records by citizens would be a question of where and how the authors published the research.

Heh The 'ethics committee' in these circumstances are generally composed of us, the plebs that feel too inadequate most of the time to challenge anything. Those who published the research, is stated in the original post and I was referring not to 'the publishers' but who, they would grant access of information to and how transparent the process of their activities would be; with respect to client privacy(given that the info is being gleaned and assessed by psychologists/psychiatrists) - there needs to be an NSA in your country, run by citizens investigating governmental bodies - too many minds snoozing.