For those of you who haven’t heard, Pinterest is a pinboard style of social media which emphasizes visuals. Recently I was trying to learn more about it and how it might apply to the psychotherapy/psychology field. So far I can see possibilities:
DBT- Using Pinterest to create worksheet boards, or better yet boards of images which provide self-soothing for distress tolerance.
Behavior Charts which are visual and available instantly from home instead of going home in a book bag and being forgotten.
Virtual Comic Books to help adolescents learn and practice sequencing and pragmatic speech.
Screenshots of video games that can be shared by gaming patients with gamer-affirmative therapists.
Psychoeducation Tools for a variety of issues, including the above example. Click on the image to see my board on Infographics for video games and gaming. They are not intended as professionally vetted research, and you’ll not the heading encourages viewers to check out the research.
There are obviously things to be concerned about, such as privacy and how best to bring Pinterest into the therapeutic session, office and process. Pinterest is not HIPAA-compliant, for example, so would a link sent via hushmail be secure enough for some uses? How might we make sure our patients could use this powerful visual tool in a way that did not disclose what health information described what they were using it for.
What do you think? How might we use this powerful visual medium to enhance our treatment with patients in an best-practice way?
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Hi Mike, this is a really good idea. If pinterest doesn’t yet, I imagine they will be creating a way to pin your board to your website soon. It would be good to generate a board like this for any of the above clinical reasons to use for visuals I may otherwise tweet/post on a blog.
Hi Mike,
HUGE fan of Pinterest. It was only recently that I started noticing that many of the DIY projects or wall art of quotes about relationships and self-care could constitute their own psychotherapy board. Because I feature my Pinterest link on my therapy blog, I find myself compelled (in a good way) to make more of these resources available, with helpful hints and tips about the pins I find useful for DIY therapy purposes.
I have thoughts about the issues of confidentiality brought up at the end up your post. While Pinterest is certainly not HIPAA compliant, nor will it ever be, I wonder if this is similar to clients acknowledging mental health providers in a public space. If a client chooses to follow a therapist’s pin board, what enduring effects might this have, if any? What if they wish to stop following-will they have an eternal ghost trail in the Pinterest archives? How might this impact the client and the therapist in the long term? Short term? I think the phenomenon of the “anonymous” therapist is evolving with the use of social media, and all for the better I think. After all, therapy does not occur in a vacuum with a clinician who lacks an identity (nor should we be casting off that identity just because we go to work). Who is to say, though, what the drawbacks may be at this point in time.
Hi, Mike! Welcome to the world of Pinterest! Can we find you there yet?
I use it as a place to toss various tools for clients to scan and choose from.
For my consulting clients, I have Private Practice Inside Out (http://pinterest.com/tamaragsuttle/private-practice-from-the-inside-out/) as a general catch-all for private practice.
I’ve also started several more for psychotherapists including those for individual expressive therapies, How to Host an Open House for Your Private Practice, Social Media Tools for Psychotherapists, Techniques and Tools for Psychotherapists, and Therapists’ Offices on the Web.
For my clinical work, I’ve created Pin boards for Attention / Meditation / Mindfulness, Creativity, Grief / Loss / Dying / Mourning, Journaling / Therapeutic Writing, Multiple Intelligences, Neuro-psychology, Play Therapy, Relationships, Self Care, Suicide / Self Harm, and Trauma Therapy.
The possibilities are endless for the categories. I use them as I might have an open bookshelf or file cabinet that my clients (and potential clients) can go through at their leisure. I wouldn’t include anything there that I wouldn’t share with my clients. It’s a quick way for me to toss information and resources into broad categories for easy access.
You, of course, are a wealth of information so I can imagine that your Pin boards might offer much to your consulting clients and your clinical clients, too. Hope to find you pinning soon!