The PanelPicker doesn’t close until the end of the day next Friday, September 4th. So if you like the panel I’m co-proposing with Dr. John Grohol, and you haven’t yet voted, please do. We are working on adding some great speakers who are working within technology and psychology. And please know that comments and questions are also encouraged on the PanelPicker page.

Psychology and the Internet: From Freud to Facebook

With the popularity of online social networks and services, what’s the psychology behind how people use them? How is the Internet changing people’s lives for better (or worse)? What does the research show about how people use Facebook and Twitter? Can you get effective mental health treatment online?
Our panel will address the following questions:

1. What is research telling us about technology and mental health?
2. How are Facebook and Twitter changing our relationships with others?
3. How is technology being used to help people with mental health concerns?
4. Is e-therapy a viable alternative to face-to-face treatment?
5. Are people’s online identities merging with their real life ones, and if so, what are the ramifications of this?
6. Is technology creating new types of psychological or personality challenges?
7. How do online support groups work and are they effective?
8. What computer software programs are most helpful for which issues?
9. Is Internet addiction something to be concerned about and if so, what do you do about it?
10. What clinical and ethical issues arise when combining mental health with technology?

The SXSW 2010 PanelPicker is live today and I’m very excited about the panel that I have submitted for SXSW Interactive with John Grohol, Psy.D., CEO and co-founder of the mental health network, PsychCentral.

You can vote for our panel (and others you’re excited about seeing at SXSW 2010, including music and film panels) by heading over to the PanelPicker.

Dr. Grohol and I met at SXSW 2009 where we attended one another’s Core Conversations, both of which focused on mental health and technology. Mine was Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks, which also included a resource wiki for attendees and those who couldn’t make it to the presentation. His was Social Networking in Health: e-patients, Data, and Privacy. Both Core Conversations generated significant interest which delighted me, as I don’t typically see many health related panels at SXSW.  I was also happy to connect with another psychologist who is passionate about the relationship between psychology and social media. As you can imagine, I’m thrilled that we will be collaborating for next year’s conference, should our panel be selected.

Last year’s Core Conversation was designed as an interactive discussion with all those in the room. But this year, I’m interested in doing a more formal presentation compiling research on technology, social media, and mental health and presenting it to SXSW attendees. Here is our submission:

Psychology and the Internet: From Freud to Facebook

With the popularity of online social networks and services, what’s the psychology behind how people use them? How is the Internet changing people’s lives for better (or worse)? What does the research show about how people use Facebook and Twitter? Can you get effective mental health treatment online?

2. How are Facebook and Twitter changing our relationships with others?

4. Is e-therapy a viable alternative to face-to-face treatment?

5. Are people’s online identities merging with their real life ones, and if so, what are the ramifications of this?

6. Is technology creating new types of psychological or personality challenges?

7. How do online support groups work and are they effective?

9. Is Internet addiction something to be concerned about and if so, what do you do about it?

10. What clinical and ethical issues arise when combining mental health with technology?

We are hoping to be able to include a couple of other panelists who are involved in psychology and social media.

The PanelPicker will remain open through the end of the day on Friday, September 4th, so don’t forget to vote for the presentations that you want to see. And I hope to see you again in Austin next year.

Pre-panel, Photo by Thomas Roche

I wanted to provide an update on my recent experience at SXSW Interactive. I didn’t get to go to every panel I’d wanted to attend, but I believe most people come home from SXSW feeling that way.

Therapy 2.0: Mental Health For Geeks which I co-presented with Thomas Roche, was well attended with somewhere between 50-60 people in the room. As the room filled up, I wondered whether a group of this size would really allow for  a conversation, but I was pleasantly surprised to experience people talking with one another and sharing ideas, as opposed to simply directing their comments back to Thomas and me. There was quite a bit of energy in the room as people talked about how they sometimes feel overwhelmed by information. Some mentioned issues with non-privacy while others talked about the illusion of intimacy that one gets with social networking sites. One person observed that the frequent interruptions of technology have changed her experience of what it means to be alone, which I found interesting. People talked about their own tips for keeping healthy which included hobbies, breaks, exercise, and techniques such as leaving their devices at home.

Since we were doing a Core Conversation, rather than a formal panel, I wanted to create some resource so that folks could obtain information, if they felt compelled to do so after talking about all of these issues. With that in mind, I created a Therapy 2.0 wiki where folks are welcome to find out more. Please feel free to check it out for information related to self-assessment, books, online tools, and how to find a therapist. We ended our Core Conversation with my list of five things you can do now to improve your mental health. These are also on the wiki, but I am also sharing them here.

In summary, I had a wonderful time presenting at SXSW this year and am looking forward to returning next year, regardless of whether I’m presenting or simply listening and learning from the other inspirational panelists and attendees who show up each year.

Five Things You Can Start Doing Now to Improve Your Mental Health

1. Weekly gratitude practice

Research shows that keeping a weekly gratitude journal has significant effects on increasing optimism and decreasing reported physical symptoms. But don’t overdo it. Lyubomirsky et al. (2005) found that those who practiced gratitude three times per week saw less benefit than those doing it once a week, suggesting that there may be a habituation effect and loss of gains if you do it more than once per week. Consider putting a reminder in your calendar to do this once a week.

2. Breathing exercises/Mindfulness practice

If you find yourself feeling stressed or anxious, doing a simple breathing exercise can help lower your blood pressure, lower your heart rate, and bring your attention away from distressing thoughts. It is easy to let future-focused or past-focused thoughts get in your way and this can increase depressed or anxious feelings. Be sure to breathe deeply into your lower abdomen, rather than taking shallow breaths just into your upper chest.

Breathing exercises are one component of mindfulness which is the practice of staying focused upon the present moment. There have been many studies showing the beneficial effects of mindfulness practice on depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, stress, chronic pain, and other ailments. When practicing mindfulness, sit in a comfortable place and start with the breathing. Then focus simply on being in your body. Notice your weight in the chair and the sounds you hear. If worrisome thoughts enter your mind, bring your focus back to your breath. Try to do this for 5 minutes a day and work up to 15 minutes.

You may also consider searching for podcasts that offer relaxation, breathing, and mindfulness exercises.

3. Connect with others

There is much data suggesting that social support and connection increases mental health and feelings of self-worth while simultaneously decreasing stress. Consider joining an activity group, taking a class, or even volunteering somewhere.

Have a lot of work to do? Try co-working or just go to a cafe to get your work done.

4. Exercise

There is significant data indicating that exercise relieves symptoms of depression and anxiety while also helping with insomnia. Consider combining exercise with connecting with others by joining a gym or a boot camp or organizing physical activities with friends.

5. Thought-tracking

If you’re struggling with anxiety or depression, tracking thoughts and moods can be helpful. Thought records are a cognitive-behavioral tool that can help you examine thoughts and beliefs and how they influence your mood. You may notice patterns and less useful beliefs that come up in your inner monologue with yourself. Identifying these thought patterns can be a first step in changing them.

Melissa Gira interviewed me over on Sexerati in preparation for my SXSW panel, Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks. Check out the interview to read Melissa’s questions and my answers about how a geek-friendly therapist (me!) would help a client manage challenges and stressors related to dating, love, and breakups 2.0.

Of course, if you want to join the conversation at SXSW, then please come to my Core Conversation, on Tuesday, March 17th, 3:30 – 4:30 in Room 5B of the Austin Convention Center. Thomas Roche and I will be facilitating a conversation with our attendees and we plan to cover the following topics:

• Mental health and occupational risks that tech people are susceptible to, and what they can do about it;

• How to assess your current health strategies and recognize self-care plans you may need to implement;

• Friendship 2.0, Dating 2.0, and Breakup 2.0 issues;

• Staying focused on tasks and productivity in the culture of distraction;

• Tools technology can offer for improving your mental health; and

• Resources if you realize you need more help

Since this is a Core Conversation, we’re especially interested in the questions and topics you will be bringing. So if you’re going to Austin this year, please come join the conversation and put the interactive into our panel!

I hope to see many of you there on Tuesday.

A couple of SXSW panels that I’d really like to attend managed to slip through the cracks. I’m going to blame it on the plethora of amazing talks and panels overwhelming me on my first pass. But I want to give these two a mention, as I think they should be very interesting.

Friendship is Dead by Russ Unger and David Armano will explore the difference between online and offline friendships. They ask, whether social networking tools have diluted the meaning of friendship and what it really means to add or “collect,” friends. I’m interested in topics like this which address issues of relationships and community, and how social networking can expand or constrict our notions of connection.

Also, Nerd Baiter: Using the Gadgets to Get the Geeks by Tara Brown sets out to look at how people can use social networking to attract potential dating partners. Brown says she will explore both services and applications which can be used by people to get more of what they want out of their dating lives. I’m looking forward to learning more and hearing the conversaiton that ensues.

With the Festival only just a week away, I’m getting very excited. See you in Austin!

In my last post, I wrote about some of the panels I’m looking forward to attending at SXSW this year that relate to technology, health, and relationships. In case you thought I’d forgotten to mention the ones that relate to human sexuality, be assured that I simply thought they deserved their own feature. I believe that sexuality is one of the most important aspects of a person’s physical, emotional, and psychological health. So, let’s dig into the sex panels that I’m looking forward to attending this year.

The first is Sex Ed Online: How Teens Self Savvy. In this panel, Karen Kreps and Karen Rayne will share how kids sort through sexual information online. I think this is useful information for all sex educators as well as for parents who may want to know where their kids are likely to turn for information.

In Sex Lives of the Microfamous, Nick Douglas and Melissa Gira Grant will talk about the exhibitionism and voyeurism that occurs when people talk about their sex and dating lives on the internet. Who does it? Who reads it? Can it help your career or hurt it? These are good questions for the internet famous, those who follow them, or anyone who has considered documenting their sex and dating life online.

Violet Blue will be presenting Sexual Exploitation, Sexual Expression and Self-Defense. In this panel, Blue asserts that sexual exploitation and sexual expression are intrinsic to the online experience of everyone, whether intentional or not. Blue claims that knowing how to protect yourself from a sexual crisis is crucial information that we should all be equipped with and it’s hard to argue against such logic. She plans to discuss legal issues, cyberbullying, and sexual expression. This promises to be a great follow-up to the Sexual Privacy Online panel that I attended last year. I look forward to hearing her strategies for self-protection.

Lastly, Touching Me Touching You: How We Feel Technology is an exciting panel that will focus on computer-mediated touch, including interactive clothing design and teledildonic sex. Interactive technology is changing how people sexually interact and this panel seeks to explore a number of questions related to new sexual technologies and our emotions related to them. This panel is jam-packed with interesting speakers, including Kevin Alderman, Yin He, Michelle Hinn, Thecla Schiphorst, and Cory Silverberg.

One of the challenges of SXSW is that it’s sometimes hard to make it to all the interesting panels that you hope to attend. The upside is that if you miss a panel or can’t make it to the Festival, many of the panels are podcast so you can hear them later. Some of last year’s podcasts are available on the SXSW Coverage page and many more are available on Odeo. This year promises to have even fuller coverage of panels and Core Conversations, so chances are good you will be able to hear some of these presentations later if you’d like to hear what you missed.

In exactly two weeks, I will be heading to Austin, Texas to participate in SXSW Interactive which takes place from March 13-17th. I’m  excited to see a number of panels this year that are addressing the intersection of technology, health, and relationships—all things I spend a great deal of my time obsessing over. Here are a few panels that I’m very much looking forward to attending, as they promise to cover issues near and dear to my heart—as well as my psychotherapy practice.

John Grohol, Ph.D., the founder of PsychCentral, a wonderfully accessible resource for both therapists and clients, will be presenting a panel called Social Networking in Health: e-Patients, Data & Privacy. This panel promises to address issues of patient data and privacy. He says he will talk about aggregating data which can help people spot trends and changes in their own health, and he will discuss the pros and cons of networking tools. To my knowledge, this is the only other panel presented by a fellow psychologist this year, and it crosses over some of the topics addressed in my own panel, so you can be sure I’ll be there. Melanie Rosenthal will also be presenting Killing Us Softly: The Failure of Technology in Health Care, which will address bringing health technology into our communities and the various challenges of bridging social networks with sterile health technology. I am interested in hearing more about this topic and hearing what she has learned about attempts to bridge the gaps.

Then there are a number of panels which address relationship issues. Brave New Dating with Ryan McMinn and Ali Watkins will focus on how dating protocols have been changed by the web. McMinn and Watkins encourage attendees to come discover new approaches focused on outcomes rather than process. Another dating related panel is Digital Dating: Are the Internets Killing Your Game? by Aubrey Sabala. Sabala’s panel will focus on the complications of digital dating in a Love 2.0 world, mediated by Facebook, Twitter and text messages. Since Relationship 2.0 issues are a specialty area of my practice, I’m eager to hear what Sabala and her participants have to say.

Then there are the panels that focus on privacy and exposure. Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused by Danah Boyd promises to explore the complex ways that people try to control access and visibility in order to demonstrate that privacy these days is just very confused. Boyd plans to discuss people’s concepts and experiences of privacy and find ways to manage it in Web 2.0. On the flip side of privacy is the practice of baring it all on the net.

A Brief History of Growing Up Online organized by Maria Diaz will look at the backlash that seems to be focused primarly upon women who document their lives on the Internet. Diaz is interested in old school “bloggers” (formerly teens) who will talk about coming of age while exposing their lives on the Internet. Her panel will explore how it has affected the ways these women are now leading their lives. She’s also interested in the next generation and what the effects are of having it become normative to share so many private moments of one’s life with the world. I often wonder how youth is influenced by growing up in an online world with a very different sense of access and privacy than that with which I grew up. This panel should provide some interesting context as people reflect on their past experiences and how they feel about them now. Since many people shift their relationship with privacy and exposure as they develop and grow and aong with the fluctuations in the growth of the internet, I am looking forward to hearing some different perspectives.

Lastly, of course, there is my own Core Conversation, Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks, which I am co-presenting with Thomas Roche. We plan to talk with attendees about a number of issues, which will include: mental health and occupational risks that tech people are susceptible to, and what they can do about it; how to assess your current health strategies and recognize self-care plans you may need to implement; Friendship 2.0, Dating 2.0, and Breakup 2.0 issues; staying focused on tasks and productivity in the culture of distraction; tools technology can offer for improving your mental health; and resources if you realize you need more help.

This is shaping up to be a very exciting year and I look forward to returning to the Bay Area with much renewed energy and inspiration, as I did last year.

I am delighted to announce that my proposed panel, Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks was accepted as a Core Conversation in next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival taking place in Austin, TX, March 13 – 17, 2009. Thank you to all who voted for it.

One of the exciting things about a Core Conversation is that it removes the traditional speaker/audience interface and is an actual conversation between the presenter and the audience, so it is truly an interaction as opposed to a lecture. I feel the issues related to mental health will lend themselves much better to a conversation than a panel, so I’m very glad that this is the chosen format for my topic. There is also a nice symmetry to my submission being selected as a Core Conversation, since it was during such a presentation last year that I first felt inspired to submit my idea to the SXSW community.

My co-presenter for the panel will be fantasy-horror-erotica author, blogger, sex educator and self-identified geek Thomas Roche. He has some thoughts about mental health for geeks from the patient side and how new tech tools relate to ADD and Depression.

As we get closer to the conference, I will post an update here. The date and time have not yet been selected, but I will post the details here, when I have them.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my panel Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks is up on the Panel Picker for SXSW. You may have already voted on the panels you want to see, but I still want to invite you to comment on my panel or to post questions on the Panel Picker that you would want answered by my panel.

I am taking the Interactive part of SXSW Interactive seriously and want to make sure that my panel reflects the needs and concerns of the SXSW community. If my panel is selected, I will put up a wiki to allow people to ask questions and post comments prior to SXSW. The Panel Picker will close on August 29th, so you still have eight more days to peruse topics and cast your vote!

The panel picker has launched for the 2009 South By Southwest Interactive Festival. You can feel free to create an account and vote or comment on the panels that interest you. You can also post questions directly to the people proposing their panels.

The panel I submitted this year is called Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks. It will answer the following questions:

1. What specific mental health and occupational risks are tech people more susceptible to, and what can they do about it?
2. What can one do to assess their current health strategies and recognize which self-care plans they need to implement?
3. How can people manage Friendship 2.0, Dating 2.0, and Breakup 2.0 issues?
4. How can people maximize their productivity as tech freelancers while minimizing their risk of burnout and social isolation?
5. How can people handle e-stalkers, trolls, and cyberbullies without completely losing their minds?
6. Is it possible to maintain any privacy while enjoying a satisfying online and offline social life?
7. Blogging on ambien and drunk text messaging: how does a person clean up their messes while maintaining their popularity?
8. What anger management strategies can people utilize when the hardware or software is interfering with their productivity?
9. Can technology offer you any tools for actually improving your mental health?
10. What resources are available to you if you realize you need more help?

Voting on the panel picker closes on August 29th.