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Psychiatrists’ Perceptions of Facebook and Other Social Media

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Abstract

The literature has seen a surge in research on the mental health impacts of technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and other social media, but little is known regarding how mental health workers perceive patients and clients who report use of such technologies. The present study examines how psychiatrists perceive social media and whether they make use of it. Psychiatrists (N = 48) at a tertiary care centre in Canada completed a questionnaire assessing history of using social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Google Plus and status update sites (SUSs) such as Twitter and Livejournal and whether they associate them with psychopathology. 38.5 % have used SNSs and 9.8 % have used SUSs. Only 37 % believed there was an association between psychopathology and SNSs while 33 % believed there was an association between psychopathology and SUSs. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed.

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Conflict of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Informed Consent Statement

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Eric Lis, Carl Chiniara, Robert Biskin & Richard Montoro

  2. McGill University Psychiatry Perceptions of Emerging Technologies Labs, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Eric Lis, Megan A. Wood, Carl Chiniara, Robert Biskin & Richard Montoro

  3. Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Megan A. Wood

Authors
  1. Eric Lis
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  2. Megan A. Wood
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  3. Carl Chiniara
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  4. Robert Biskin
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  5. Richard Montoro
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Correspondence to Eric Lis.

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Lis, E., Wood, M.A., Chiniara, C. et al. Psychiatrists’ Perceptions of Facebook and Other Social Media. Psychiatr Q 86, 597–602 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-015-9358-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-015-9358-2

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