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Mental Health: The Data

Hey, Tumblr! We hope the week two prompts for Mental Health Month are treating you well. In the spirit of the theme, posting it for each other, we wanted to celebrate one of the most helpful communities out there: yours. You’ve helped shape Tumblr into an incredible community for support. To take a look into exactly how it’s flourished over the years, we teamed up with Fandometrics (@thefandometrics) to bring you some sweet, sweet data.

How you talk about mental health

Discussion around #mental health has steadily grown year over year since 2013, with a 248% uptick of original posts and reblogs made between 2013 and 2016. In that same time span, original posts and reblogs about #therapy increased 29%. Much of that conversation was rooted in real people sharing real stories. Emotional and honest stories, like how therapy can help you better understand your life, how to say good-bye to the wrong therapist, or the difficulty of making the sometimes daunting decision to begin therapy for the first time.

There has also been a significant rise in people seeking ways to take care of themselves. The self-care movement has seen huge increases in searches (733%) and original posts (567%) between 2013 and 2016. Over the past six months, we’ve seen total engagement (searches, original posts, reblogs, and likes) around the #self-care tag spike with correlations to holidays and events in the news:

240% increase the day after the US Presidential Election

321% in the days following Christmas and Hanukkah

561% in the days leading up to the Inauguration, and

342% in the days following Valentine’s Day.

Anatomy of a post

To get a better understanding of what the public-facing conversations consist of, we looked at the top posts for the #mental health, #positivity, and #self-care tags from the past few years. We noticed a few trends that continued to appear over and over again:

Masterposts, a one-stop shop of information on topics like learning new hobbies, treating yourself on a budget, and resources for different mental health issues continually pop up in these tags.

Doodles like @thelatestkate’s positive messages illustrated with cats or @gemmacorrell’s Self Care Reward Stickers are a Tumblr favorite. There’s also been a neato collaborative trend where someone doodles a text post made by someone else,  like this art of living by cat principles, by @bisexualpiratequeen and @skunkaru.

Text Art like @sexioto’s reminder to take your meds and @peytonfulford’s message of more self love turn the text itself into art. In the mental health space, text art most frequently comes in the form of reminders, like to stay hydrated and to make yourself a priority.

Make your dash more positive

Because this is all about posting it for each other, here are a few great blogs to make your Tumblr experience more positive and healthy:

Positive Vibes (@posiviibes) provides positive and friendly text art in soothing colors.

LGBT+ Positivity (@goodpositivitylgbt) focuses on messages of positivity and validation for the LGBT+/MOGAI community.

Why Did You Feel Proud Today? (@todayifeltproud), a space to submit your accomplishments, big and small.

For more follow inspiration, check out our roundup from last week. We’ll be posting more each Friday this month. Keep sharing your stories, Tumblr, this month and every month.

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Here are the slides from yesterday’s presentation. Feel free to message me or come to my drop in hour tomorrow 11-12 in the writing center. 

Happy writing!

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How odd is it that I can have all this inside me and to you its just words.

David Foster Wallace

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Yet another iteration of my theory of writing

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This is How I Work

Madeline Halseth, though she prefers to go by her middle name, Annie, is a senior at the University of Denver. Though she is getting ready to graduate from her undergrad, she is also preparing to dive into a master’s

in education program in July. Annie is an amateur photographer and is a lover of all writing (even Twitter). She is particularly passionate about education, and more specifically, the different approaches and pedagogies for teaching writing and composition to high school students and first-year college students. Originally from Boulder, Colorado, Annie now lives

 Location: Denver, Colorado

Current Gig: Writing Fellow and Consultant at the Shopneck Writing Center

One word that best describes how you work: Sporadically

Current mobile device: iPhone 6

Current computer: Macbook Pro

What apps, software, or tools can’t you live without? Acorn and Lightroom photo-editing software. I also use Spotify for my music (which is a big part of my life). Spotify is a great way to find new music as they have great playlists and even create a personalized playlist for you every week!

What’s your workspace setup like? I love my houseplants and my beta fish, Grigori. My workspace is set up by a large window and is filled with stones, house-plants, and Grigori as well as a plethora of pens and post-its.

What’s your best time-saving shortcut or life hack? Podcasts! They are an easy and fun way to obtain news while walking to class or driving to the store.

What’s your favorite to-do list manager? My planner. I go through periods where it is perfectly organized and color coded, but usually it is full of half-finished thoughts and nearly illegible notes. I love it.

[this doesn’t have to be digital. It can be a notebook, whiteboard, or Post-Its)

When doing research, are there any tools that you find to be indispensable? I usually start my research on JSTOR. The materials available are diverse and I am usually able to find pertinent research to my major (literary studies). I also love browsing other databases and the archives of certain publications, such as The New Yorker.

What do you write with? I am very picky about my pens! My favorite are the flare pens, which I order from Amazon, and the sharpie fine point pens. I also cannot read without a pencil in my hand, writing with a pen in books is impossible for me.

What everyday thing are you better at than everyone else? My morning coffee. I used to be a barista and as such I am very picky about my morning caffeine.

What do you listen to while you work? It depends on what I am working on. Generally, I am a huge fan of jazz while I work. Duke Ellington is my go to artist, though my favorite album would have to be Count Basie's Beatle Bag.

What are you currently reading? Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and The Beatles Lyrics by Hunter Davies

Do you use an e-reader or do you prefer paper books? Paper! I recently read that ebook sales have decreased recently in favor of paper due to younger generations preference for paper!

What’s your sleep routine like? Ideally, I try to be in bed by 12:00 and up by 8:00. Though I usually end up going to bed later and waking up earlier, which means that about once a week I need a day where I can get a looong night's sleep.

Fill in the blank: I’d love to see _________ answer these same questions. Malcolm Gladwell. I just finished listening to his podcast, Revisionist History, and I think he is a fascinating person.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? When you are finished with a project, you should cut out at least 30% of your words.

Is there anything else you want to add about your writing life? I am trying to do more personal writing, which means not for class. I am attempting at least 30 minutes - 1 hour a day of just writing. I am also experimenting with a more journalistic approach to some of my writing.

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If you want to make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke? All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.

Kurt Vonnegut 1977

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My favorite coffee bar in Denver and my favorite place to write.

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Welcome to my Tumblr

Hey, Everyone!

This Tumblr page is dedicated to a WRIT 1133 class at the University of Denver taught by Professor KT. I am TAing this class and thought I should go ahead and complete the first assignment as well (though it is now technically late😁).

I am a senior at DU and am in the 4+1 program to get my masters in Curriculum and Instruction through the Morgridge College of Education. I primarily study English and writing, though I have taken multiple chemistry, art history,  and biology classes. I am originally from Boulder, though living in Denver the last few years has given me a newfound love for city living.

I have always had a love of writing, and have been a happier person since I chose to follow my passion and take writing courses. I am also a research nerd and love to browse the databases (shout out to JSTOR) when I am working on research papers. 

Before I sit down to write (unless I am working on a personal or creative piece) I always think about my audience. Whether I am writing for a professor, a colleague, or a specific discourse community I always keep my audience in mind. I also have learned to give myself TONS of time for reflection and revision at the end of my writing process. This is a new strategy for me, as I used to revise as I wrote and would do little-to-no reflection at the end of a project. However, I have found that this is the step that allows me to continue to develop as a writer and create more polished products.

Defining ‘good writing’ in a single sentence is quite the challenge, especially since I don’t necessarily believe in a single definition of good writing 😆. So here is my working definition: Good writing is an effective and engaging conversation between the author(s), the audience, and the discourse community in which the writing is submitted. 

My goals for this quarter are varied, but can be summed up by making my last undergrad quarter at DU my strongest quarter.