About

MHSMchat is a weekly facilitated chat about mental health related topics. MHSM stands for Mental Health and Social Media. Everyone is welcome to participate or just view. To participate in a chat you need a Twitter account. (Set up an account at Twitter.com). Volunteer chat facilitators and topic ideas to discuss are always welcome. If you know someone that would be good at facilitating a particular topic, please contact @MHSMchat with the info. Emails should be sent by DM (Direct Message) for privacy. (Please note that your twitter account can’t be private to participate in a twitter chat – no one other than the followers you allow will see your tweets.)

Chats happen weekly as follows: First, Second, Third and Fourth Wednesdays at 8:00 pm ET.  

5th Wednesdays are off – there is no chat.

Links to chat transcripts will be posted after the chats, the transcripts are prepared using Storify https://storify.com/MHSMchat/

If you’re new to Twitter and Twitter chats, read this helpful article http://twitter.about.com/od/twitter-glossary/a/How-To-Twitter-Chat.htm

Some helpful tips for participants:

As a participant you’re welcome to participate to the extent you want.

Please be aware that your twitter account has to be public to use tweetchat.com and have your tweets show up in the hashtag stream. Your tweets to the group won’t be private but you can change your account setting after the chat is over to make your tweets private again.

If you’d like to receive a reminder for the weekly #mhsm chat send @MHSMchat a tweet or DM to add you to the reminder list.

To join or observe the #mhsm chat:
Log into your twitter account at the #mhsm chat time
Access www.twitterchat.com in your browser
Enter mhsm for the hashtag
You’ll be asked to log in and authorize the app with your twitter account
Remember your tweets have to be under 135 characters including spaces (the other 5 spaces are reserved for #mhsm which will be added
automatically for you).

You can also follow the #hashtag on Twitter.com if you just want to observe.

Please be courteous to other participants and observers.  The Mental Health & Social Media (#mhsm) chat is open to everyone regardless of their views. We are bound to be in disagreement at times but we can still be civil about it.

Some helpful tips for facilitators:

As a facilitator you are moderating the discussion by posing questions to the participants but generally not providing the answers. The questions should be designed to evoke discussion among the participants as to what the answer is for them. The participants may pose questions to you to receive clarification of the intent of the question.

We use tweetchat.com with the hashtag #mhsm for the discussion. You’re welcome to use any third party platform such as Hootsuite.com, Tweetdeck.com. etc. You’ll need to authorize the Tweetchat app on your Twitter account. It only takes a couple of clicks and then you’re all set to go.

@MHSMchat will be available to introduce you the facilitator and greet/welcome everyone to the chat. We’ll announce the topic and ask everyone to introduce themselves. Then we’ll turn the chat over to you! We’ll let you know when that the chat is coming to an official close and use the last three minutes for people to share their blog links so participants can follow them, etc. We’ll also share a link to the #mhsm chat transcript.

We recommend having six to seven questions prepared but be flexible, because it depends on the number of participants and amount of discussion as to whether you’ll get to all of them. You should generally allow about 10 minutes per question and even less if the conversation is tapering/dropping off, but go with the flow whatever it is and don’t worry. It can start off a little slow while people are showing up to participate. If you see you’re running over the allotted one hour time slot, you may have to make a judgment about which question(s) to skip. If facilitating a discussion is new to you, we’ll be happy to review your questions if want some feedback prior to your #mhsm chat.

We’ve scheduled our usual #mhsm chat reminders. We encourage you to promote your #mhsm chat and other #mhsm chats that you want to participate in. We’ll are generally available daily between 9:00 am and 9:00 pm ET, so you can DM or @ MHSMchat with any questions on Twitter. We know you’ll do great. The #mhsm chat group is very helpful and forgiving.

(Let’s keep our fingers and toes that Twitter/Tweetchat doesn’t have any technical problems. If it does, we’ll reschedule the chat after waiting a few minutes.)