2012 – 2015
Funding: The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZON MW)

This is a participatory-ethnographic project aiming to evaluate a new social media approach for improving public mental health in communities with low mental resilience. 

It involves a local television soap Bianca in the Neighbourhood and interactive web applications as well as local community work, focusing on communities that typically distrust mental health professionals. The project aims to overcome the gap between mental health professionals with high socioeconomic status and communities of low socioeconomic status by way of a social media approach developed in consultation with neighbourhood residents as well as mental health and media professionals. The objective is to gain insight into whether and how the different cultures and idioms of mental health are becoming interconnected in this social media approach, and how different stakeholders view the effect of this new approach on mental health.

Researchteam: Klasien Horstman, Marten de Vries, Clemens Hosman, Mare Knibbe (post doc)