We are happy to announce the latest publication by our colleague Elien Beelen and her supervisors Kathleen Beullens and Kathrin Karsay!
Mental health posts on social media often include firsthand experiences, also referred to as lived experiences. In addition, mental health discourse on social media frequently focuses on mutual support. Drawing on the model of inspirational media, it was expected that exposure to empathetic and lived-experience mental health posts on Instagram would promote prosocial outcomes, including higher self-compassion, lower mental health stigma, greater help-seeking intentions, and increased self-diagnostic tendencies. Two pre-registered experiments were conducted among emerging adults in Belgium and Austria. Contrary to expectations and prior research on inspirational media, the findings showed no significant effects of exposure to this type of Instagram content on the examined outcomes.
You can read the article here: https://netlibrary.aau.at/medienjournal/periodical/titleinfo/13887312?