Instagram highlights support resources for mental wellness
For Mental Health Month, Instagram is shining a light on communities of support, as well as recently-added tools to connect users with the help they need.
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May is Mental Health Month in America, and the phot0-sharing social media platform Instagram wants to be a part of the conversation -- as well as a potential support outlet for its users.
"Every day on Instagram, we see people share their mental health journeys and connect with communities of support," Instagram CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom wrote in a blog post this weekend.
Instagram users can anonymously report other users they might be worried about -- Instagram will then offer to connect them with support the next time they log in.
To that end, Instagram is highlighting its "Instagram Together" landing page that gives voice to topics like suicide, depression, and eating disorders, and the ways in which people are using the social media platform to find support. Instagram also points to tools introduced late last year that allow users to anonymously report other users who they might be worried about. From there, Instagram will gently offer access to support resources the next time they log in.
"We have teams working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to review these reports," Systrom writes. "We also display these resources when someone visits a hashtag page for a sensitive topic." Additionally, Instagram cites collaboration with mental wellness organizations like the Crisis Text Line, Samaritans, and the National Eating Disorder Association.
"These communities are helping to make illnesses that are often invisible to friends and family visible through photos and videos," Systrom says.