This text is part of the special Research section
This will surprise many as the deleterious effects of social networks on mental health are denounced, especially among young people. But a Concordia University researcher is shaking up conventional wisdom by revealing the benefits Instagram can have for women with mental health issues.
Fanny Gravel-Patry has been interested in social networks for several years. “I did my master’s thesis in art history on the images of the Iranian green revolution of 2019, the first revolution mediated through social networks”, says the doctoral candidate in communication. She also works as a mental health promotion consultant at the Montreal branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association.
She was also interested in the images and stories of violence circulating on the Internet in the context of the #MeToo movement, which led her to her thesis topic. “Many women testified to their sexual assault on the networks. I found myself on Instagram pages where several women were trying to create healthier spaces to protect themselves from these sometimes difficult stories to hear, ”says the one who has also personally used Instagram in a perspective of care and information for her disorder. anxiety and depression. “The convergence of all these elements made me want to understand what spaces, informative content and visuals on Instagram mean to women,” she explains.
An additional tool
In full confinement, Fanny Gravel-Patry interviewed 22 women aged 20 to 45 struggling with mental health problems about their use of Instagram. “Their consumption of online content is often seen as passive in studies on social networks and we tend less to see that there is an action, a desire and emotions linked to it”, notes- She. The participants lived with various mental health problems: eating or anxiety disorders, depression or even borderline personality disorder. They also completed a questionnaire detailing their practices on Instagram and described in real time their emotions while browsing this social network during the interview.
The researcher found that Instagram has become, for these women, an additional tool for living with mental illness. “It is often seen as a trigger for symptoms or producing mental health problems. But in the case of my participants, it can become a protective factor by creating social ties and providing access to information,” she says. They draw from it a feeling of community and recognition, positive encouragement, but also information whose importance is often minimized in mental health recovery: “Understanding in a theoretical way what is going on in our head can help understand what is happening to us,” she says.
Experiential knowledge with pitfalls
Fanny Gravel-Patry, who is halfway through the writing of her thesis, was not really surprised by the results of her analyzes which shed light on the development of experiential knowledge online by women and for women in mental health. “It confirmed what I felt as an individual, but also my observation of a social phenomenon that is being created around mental health and Instagram,” she says. In certain Quebec accounts, such as Humain avant tout or Dose de psy, “it is not written black and white that the pages are intended for women, but the type of content offered (visuals, way in which the messages are presented) comes more look for them,” says Fanny Gravel-Patry.
The importance of visuals and design on Instagram should also lead users to handle this network with care. “There is a certain aesthetic behind all these messages, which is a bit standardized. You have to keep a critical eye, ”recommends the doctoral student, who also warns about the vogue for mental health. “It has become a fashionable subject. Everyone improvises as an expert in mental health at work, for example, because it is a subject that has come out a lot during the pandemic ”, launches the one who observes that this craze is accompanied by a form of injunction. “We talked a lot about the” self care in recent years, with the idea that you have to take care of yourself. The communities I have studied are part of this social phenomenon that we are observing. »
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, relating to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.