Mental Health: Top 100 Influencers and Brands

Mental health is the successful performance of mental function, resulting in productive activities, fulfilling relationships with other people, and providing the ability to adapt to change and cope with adversity. The mental health discussion on social media is used as a way of helping those with mental illnesses cope with experiences such as stress, depression, anxiety, relationship problems, grief, addiction, ADHD or learning disabilities, mood disorders, or other mental illnesses of varying degrees. Therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners or physicians can help manage mental illness with treatments such as therapy, counselling, or medication.

WHAT ARE THE INFLUENCERS SAYING?

We reached out to some of the top influencers on our list to ask them for their views on mental health. We spoke to André Picard (#4), Rebecca Lombardo (#15), Norman Lamb (#16), Hilary Jacobs Hendel (#18), Melanee (#19) and Denise McDermott MD (#21). Be sure to follow them to stay up to date on the best content and resources on mental health!

André Picard – Health Columnist, The Globe and Mail

“Mental health has long been the neglected step-sister of the health care system, in large part because sufferers were hidden away and forgotten. In recent years, people with mental illness, their families and friends have become more vocal and visible, and that is helping shatter negative stereotypes and combat stigma. The media has also played a large role in bringing mental health issues out of the shadows. But there is a long way to go before prevention, treatment and support services are adequate.”

Maliyka, MPH – Board Member at Stop Street Harassment,  Atlantic Region Stork’s Nest Coordinator Zeta Phi Beta Sorority
“This past May the mental health community did what it’s done for some years now…. Shed a light on mental health. Unlike any other May, I made sure to do my part and share information as well. However, this past May I really noticed something. Absent from the discussion is perinatal mental health. There is continued discussion about schizophrenia, depression, ADHD, bipolar, etc. however, there’s little to none about baby blues or post partum depression. This bothered me because this past May, I was 7 months pregnant and about to enter a realm that so many pregnant women enter… Potentially in need of perinatal mental health therapy.
 While we have come a long way in the field of perinatal mental health, we have so far to go. We in the public health field know that it exist however, we really aren’t doing our due diligence to ensure that just as much focus is placed on research and addressing it. Just like so many other conditions that are CIS female specific, perinatal mental health is not at the top of the list of concerns when it comes to mental health. Hopefully, one day soon we will get there. As for me, I have given birth to my baby and while I am not mentally ill, I have already located a therapist that I can chat with if only to give myself a weekly routine as I adjust to my new role. I won’t share how finding one that was covered under my insurance was an arduous task. What I will share is that we must do better. There are too many children dying at the hands of their mother. These mothers are potentially suffering from perinatal mental illness. By paying more attention to this condition, we might be able to save the next child at risk.”

Rebecca Lombardo – Author of It’s Not Your Journey

“When it comes to mental illness, I have many hopes for the future, As someone that was diagnosed at age 19, I’ve seen a lot of things happen in 24 years. My opinion is that for every positive step forward, we’ve taken 3 steps backwards.  My personal goals are to keep talking to hopefully keep raising awareness.  The mental health community on social media especially, have some fantastic resources. We’ve all formed a team to put an end to the stigma that surrounds us all. I will always worry that perhaps we aren’t doing enough, but I feel that we’re all doing our best. Will those of us with mental illness ever be able to stand tall and hold our heads high; confident in our place in this world? Will we finally receive the respect that we deserve for our strength, compassion, and the battles we’ve faced? I am hopeful for that outcome. All we can do it keep fighting. If you ask any one of us, we’ll tell you that we’re prepared for that fight.”

Norman Lamb – Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk

 “We are in the middle of a cultural revolution as mental health comes out of the shadows. The Equality for Mental Health campaign is gaining momentum, breaking into the mainstream media and political discussion, but promised investment in new services is not materialising at the pace we need. We have made great strides in recent years – trebling the number of people accessing talking therapies, a new approach to mental health crisis care, a long-awaited strategy for children and young people’s mental health, and the first ever mental health access and waiting time standards in the NHS. Yet at the same time, mental health always loses out on funding because of an institutional bias against it – flawed financial incentives and an imbalance of rights.”

Hilary Jacobs Hendel LCSW Certified Psychotherapist and Supervisor at AEDP

“There are basically two categories of emotions. There are core emotions, like anger, joy and sadness, which when experienced viscerally lead to a sense of relief and clarity (even if they are initially unpleasant). And there are inhibitory emotions, like shame, guilt and anxiety, which serve to block us from experiencing core emotions.Children with too much shame grow up to be adults who can no longer sense their inner experiences. They learn not to feel, and they lose the ability to use their emotions as a compass for living. Somehow they need to recover themselves. Many psychotherapies focus on the content of the stories that people tell about themselves, looking for insights that can be used to fix what’s wrong. By contrast, accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy and other trauma therapies focus on fostering awareness of the emotional life of the patient as it unfolds in real time in front of the therapist. The therapist is actively affirming, emotionally engaged and supportive. She encourages the patient to attend not only to his or her thoughts and emotions but also to the physical experience of those thoughts and emotions.”

Melanee – Working Mom

“I’m a mom of a child with mental illness it a daily struggle to maintain sanity in the home so I use Twitter to gain insight and information and as a stress reliever for me as a place to vent at time as well as provide support to other parents faced with the same challenges as myself.”

Denise McDermott MD – Adult & Child Psychiatrist at drdenisemd.com

“As a society we need to embrace mental health and wellness in every environment. We need to be proactive not reactive. We all thrive when individuals thrive”

MAPPING THE COMMUNITY

We were very interested in seeing which mental health influencers and brands were leading the online discussion, so we analysed 818K+  tweets from 24th February – 23rd May 2016 mentioning the keyword: “mentalhealth”. We then identified the top 100 most influential brands and individuals leading the discussion on Twitter. What we discovered was a very engaged community, with much discussion between individuals and brands. Below you can see a network map of the online conversation with the number 1 brand Mental Health Foundation at the centre. This map was created with our Influencer Relationship Management software (IRM). Be sure to click on the map to enjoy the full size network diagram in greater detail.

#MentalHealth: Top 100 Influencers and Brands

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Below you can see another network map created with our Influencer Relationship Management software (IRM) showing the #16 influencer Norman Lamb at the center and the conversations to and from the influencers in his field:
Here is another network map highlighting the #6 brand MIND, and the conversations to and from the different influencers in their field. If you are interested in learning more about identifying, managing and engaging with influencers click here to get in touch!

TOP 100 INDIVIDUALS

We looked at all the individuals engaging on Twitter to bring you a list of the top influencers in mental health. Below is the top 50, if you want to see who ranks from 50-100 be sure to download the full report by clicking the download button below.

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TOP 100 BRANDS

In the top 100 brands we can find a great selection of organisations such as the Mental Health Foundation, WHO and Mind, as well as industry resources such as Psych Central and Let’s Talk Mental Health. Below is the top 50, be sure to download the report to get the full top 100 list, and see who are most the influential brands in mental health.

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Effective influencer marketing starts with identifying relevant influencers for your brand. Onalytica’s new Discovery platform mines over 200 billion posts a year into a curated database of over 150K global social media influencers, including data from Twitter, Blogs, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn Profile Links + Demographic Data. These influencers are then ranked by Reach, Resonance, Relevance and Reference.

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Disclaimer: As ever with these lists, it must be stressed that the ranking is by no means a definitive measurement of influence, as there is no such thing. The brands and individuals listed are undoubtedly influential when it comes to driving discussion around Mental Health.

The PageRank based methodology we use to extract influencers on a particular topic takes into account the number and quality of contextual references that a user receives. We looked at social topical influence as well as topical authority by analyzing both their social engagement on Twitter and how much influencers were referenced in association with mental health on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Forums, Blogs, News and Tumblr content. These calculations also take in to account a user’s resonance (engagement) relevance (number of posts on topic) and reach (number of followers). If you want to learn more, please read our article that outlines How to identify your target influencers.

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