Hatemails, the online exchange of child pornography, facebook updates with pictures of yourself being drunk, websites where people get bashed or blackmailed because they undressed themselves in front of a webcam or for no reason at all.
The internet is full of people acting shamelessly. Not an element of the internet to be happy with. At the same time the ease with which people act shamelessly on the internet is one of the biggest key success factors of online counseling, online therapy and e-mental health. In both ways of the shameless internet people dare to act shamelessly because they feel anonymous. This results in the online sharing of thoughts and ideas where people normally are ashamed off.
Shame and healthcare
In the context of healthcare people are often ashamed of the problem they have, for example mental problems, sexual problems or problems regarding substance abuse. People can also be ashamed of the fact that they’re unable to solve the problem themselves. Because of this shame, people are even ashamed of entering a building of a healthcare organization because it might indicate to others that you’re in need of help. As a result people hesitate to ask for help because they are afraid of the social consequences. A situation that often leads to more severe problems.
Fruit
For social work, mental healthcare and youth healthcare the shameless internet offers a lot of fruits. The fact that you can be shameless on the internet offers healthcare organizations opportunities to get in contact much earlier, preventing more severe long term problems. Because of several cuts on budgets, most healthcare organizations unfortunately exclude these fruits from the financial diet that they’re on. Regardless of the fact that these fruits also offer ways to be more efficient and effective.
Fruitlovers
Slowly but surely organizations are starting to harness the shameless internet by integrating new media within their daily work. Take for instance the group of healthcare organizations that jointly offer quality information to youngsters via mindyourownlife.nl about safe and healthy sexuality, drugs and alcohol use and mental healthcare. By simply offering the information on an anonymous space like a website, people can inform themselves without visiting the organization in person.
The success of the shameless internet
Another example is that of the website hulpmix.nl, ran by a group of Dutch youth care and mental healthcare organizations. The initiative was founded after several studies showed that young immigrants can’t find their way at all to healthcare (often because of their cultural background) and by the time they do, problems are often very severe and expensive to solve. Hulpmix.nl acknowledges the important role of the cultural background of these young immigrants by working together with several online cultural communities and offers the possibility to mail and chat anonymously with healthcare professionals and to share personal stories and experiences via a forum. By doing so, Hulpmix.nl was one of the first online initiatives to win the Nationale Jeugdzorgprijs (National Youth Healthcare Prize) and one of the first to be marked by the Dutch Youth Institute (NJi) as an effective youth intervention.
Full potential
Accare is an example of an mental healthcare organization that makes use of the full potential of the shameless internet and new media. Their website 99gram.nl aims at everyone who has a more than average interest in food, weight and their figure. The website offers a complete stepped care approach which guides visitors from information, anonymous online contact with a specialist to online therapy (if needed). This approach also helps in convincing the visitor there is nothing to be ashamed of.
Acknowledgement
The shameless internet stimulates people in an important way to get help instead of waiting until problems go from bad to worse. It also makes healthcare more efficient in several ways. Unfortunately healthcare organizations don’t get payed for anonymous contact, simply because the insurance doesn’t know where to send the bill. Recently the Dutch Minister of Health decided to reserve two million euro for 2012 to finance several e-mental health websites that offer anonymous help. Unfortunately this money isn’t available for youth healthcare, social work and other counseling practices. Besides this, the two million is only enough to finance a very limited amount of websites. Nonetheless the two million is an important step in acknowledging the importance of the shameless internet and the fruits of new media for healthcare.
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