For the last 12 months or so, under the soon-to-be-mothballed @PiMHnurse Twitter handle, I have been using a tool/website called paper.li to collate information into a weekly “online newspaper” called The Perinatal Mental Health Nurse. I’ve now given it a refresh using my new Twitter account/online social media “brand” @meta4RN.

“The Perinatal Mental Health Nurse” is an online newspaper that attempts to answer the question, “What is social media saying about perinatal and infant mental health this week?”

The purpose of The Perinatal Mental Health Nurse is to attempt to answer the question, “What is social media saying about perinatal and infant mental health this week?”. To flush-out that answer, Twitter, Facebook & Google+ are being used as the data sources, and these search terms have been set: “perinatal mental health” and “infant mental health”. To add a little local and mental health nursing flavour, the terms “ACMHN” (abbreviation/hashtag for “Australian College of Mental Health Nurses”) and “HCSMANZ” (abbreviation/hashtag for “Health Care Social Media Australia & New Zealand”) are also searched on Twitter.

[Addit. 28th November 2012] An additional search term has been added: “#bePNDaware”; this hashtag had strong uptake on social media during Australia’s Postnatal Depression Awareness Week (more info about that here).

The beauty of using paper.li is that it is one of those set-and-forget tools which, at first blush, seems kind of magical and empowering: “Who needs Rupert Murdoch? I just made my own newspaper!” Just set the sources and search terms and paper.li does all the rest for you. How much does it cost? Nothing. How much time does it take to set up? Not much; less than half an hour. However, over time too-frequent updates can become a bit tired, just part of the background noise, the flotsam and jetsam of Web 2.0. Hopefully with The Perinatal Mental Health Nurse the “noise” won’t be too intrusive – the updates have been set to just once a week (Wednesdays at 6.00am, Cairns time), which will be accompanied by an automagical Twitter and Facebook anouncement.

I hope that you’ll find some items of interest in The Perinatal Mental Health Nurse. If not, why not see if there are other paper.li online newspapers that are more to your tastes or, better again, start your own?

One last thing. If you’re looking for a more thoughtfully and academically curated compilation of information regarding perinatal and infant mental health, the best website that I know of is the Perintal and Infant Mental Health LibGuide

Paul McNamara, 20th October 2012

short URL meta4RN.com/PMH-paper