Where do young people turn when they have questions about their
health? In pre-Internet days, young people would ask their doctor,
a teacher or parents for help if they needed advice. Getting help
involved personal, face-to-face contact. Today, there is another
source to go to when seeking information. Now that young people all
over the world have access to the Internet, they can turn to search
engines to find information on just about anything, including
health issues.
The pros and cons
Young people are now able to remain anonymous while they search for
information and they have a direct line to literally billions of
sources, all in one place. The downside of this new source of
unlimited information is that anyone can answer the call from young
people, and in many cases, they may be getting the wrong
information from the wrong source and not realise it. It is a
catch-22 that can lead to increased pain and suffering for young
people that are relying on strangers to give them credible
information.
Yahoo! Answers is a popular question and
answer website that allows young people to ask for advice and
answers to any question that goes through their head, be it about a
relationship,
answers to math problems, or how to cope with mental
health issues. All a person needs to use the site is a
personalised user name that can be anything they want it to be.
With the ability to remain anonymous, young people feel free to ask
questions that they might not ask in person. They no longer have to
worry what their parents will say or what their friends will think.
This opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to finding
answers and receiving reliable information.
The good thing about remaining anonymous is that young people are
free to ask any question that needs an answer. The bad thing is
that anyone can be answering their questions; it could be an expert
on the topic or someone just trying to mess with people on the
internet while hiding behind a screen name. Being anonymous is both
an advantage and a disadvantage to helping young people learn about
mental health issues online.
So what are ReachOut.com and other health
care professionals doing to make sure that young people are getting
helpful information from credible sources?
A quick glance at the mental health section of Yahoo!
Answers will provide an insightful view to the world of cyber
treatment. If you scroll through the questions, they range from
asking for a diagnosis of their symptoms to asking for help in bad
family environments.
Here at Reach Out, we use Yahoo! Answers to search
for young peoples' questions about mental health. We have staff
members and interns who scan the mental health questions and
provide an answer that young people can understand and that gives
them information to help them cope with their problems and
eventually leads them to seek professional help.
In the answers, we provide links to our fact sheets and inform
the person asking the question that ReachOut.com has forums, blogs
and other information to help them through their tough times. We
also include phone numbers that they can call to receive
counselling, like the Kids Helpline and Lifeline. Our goal is to
use this medium to educate and help young people that have nowhere
else to turn, and to eventually have them seek professional
help.
In addition to just answering questions, we also keep a record of
our responses so that we can look back on the questions that we
have answered. Yahoo! Answers allows the person asking the question
to rate the best answer so we can check to see if our responses
were helpful. We can learn what helps and also see what the person
was looking for in the answer.
Have you used Yahoo! Answers in your
classroom? Do your students access Yahoo! Answers? Join the
discussion and share your thoughts, ideas and success
stories.