Exciting Mental Health Camp Panels

Tonight, I’ll be heading to Vancouver to attend tomorrow’s all-day Mental Health Camp (Un)Conference.

I’m very excited to be in a place with others who will be talking about erasing stigma towards mental illness and how social media can expand the possibilities for healing and support. Can blogging, Twittering, and Facebooking provide therapeutic healing?

Isabella Mori and Raul Pacheco-Vega will be presenting the Keynote on Social Media and Mental Health. After that, twelve sessions will follow. It’s always a challenge at conferences to choose between two fascinating sessions, and Mental Health Camp will be no exception.

Some of the panels I’m most excited about are Sandra Kiume’s presention on Mental Health Marketing using Social Media which, of course, is going to be at the same time as Lorraine Murphy’s presentation on Anonymity, Pseudonymity: Freedoms, Dangers, and Responsibilities. Both of these topics interest me and I will sadly have to choose between them.

Karen Quinn Fung will be presenting on Mental Health and Cultural Sensitivity: Services and Stigma in Vancouver’s Ethnic Communities. While I don’t live or practice in Vancouver, I’m interested in this topic. But it also is during the same time as Airdrie Miller’s ERROR 404 Page Not Found presentation which is a personal story about choosing to take her blog down.

If you want to know more about the panels, you can read the full descriptions or just see the schedule.

I know the organizers are taking steps to protect people’s privacy while also sharing information that comes out of the conference with the web community at large. I know many people will be blogging about it, and I will try to link to some of those blogs when I return.

If you want to follow Mental Health Camp on Twitter, you can look for hashtag #mhc09 or just follow all Twitter conversations about Mental Health Camp.