Feeling Stressed? Pinterest Wants to Help With New Mental Health Resources
New Pinterest tools promote mental health for stressed searchers
With the daily news often filled with negative stories about all manner of topics, Pinterest can feel like a respite. Boards are filled with happiness and beauty — beaches that stretch forever, tiered wedding cakes, brightly colored art, fashion shows, gourmet meals, crafting ideas and summer gardens. But along with those upbeat pins, the company noticed another trend. There was an increasing tendency for people to search for things like “anxiety,” “stress,” “overwhelmed,” and “coping.”
A popular topic for pins and boards is quotes, in particular inspirational quotes. Now however, whenever anyone searches for mental health related topic, in addition to the motivational quotes, results will include resources for managing stress and enhancing coping.
Intended to promote emotional well-being, Pinterest will be providing specialized tools to help users deal with mood related issues. On July 22, the company shared a collection of mental health exercises and resources that will soon begin popping up when the user enters a search term suggesting that they may be stressed.
A Pinterest representative wrote: “According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 50% of Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in their lifetime. Real-life feelings and experiences carry over to our lives online. For instance, in the last year there have been millions of searches in the U.S. related to emotional health on Pinterest.”
When you search for a term like “work stress” or “social anxiety” a box will appear above the pins which says:
“If you’re feeling sad or stressed, here are some resources that may help improve your mood,” it says, above a disclaimer that notes Pinterest’s exercises are not a replacement for professional care. You can click into the box to see more, or scroll down to just look at the pins.”
If you click the box a dozen or so exercises will pop up. The resources include exercises designed to promote relaxation, such as deep breathing exercises and guided relaxation with audio, improve mood and increase self-care activities and self-compassion, such as recognizing your own strengths, making a plan to address stressful life events and expressing gratitude. The exercises include the time suggested for taking different types of mental breaks.
The exercises were created by experts from Stanford’s Mental Health Lab with advisors from Vibrant Emotional Health and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Pinterest says the exercises aren’t intended to replace professional help. They were designed for those who might need a bit of emotional support for a buildup of stress or a sense of feeling overwhelmed from normal life experiences.
They also suggest that some of the resources can be useful for increasing confidence and helping users putting Pinterest performance into perspective such as after an epic campaign fail. Pinterest says they will continue to direct searches related to any type of suicidal behavior or self-harm to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
The exercises are part of the Pinterest app, but the page was created to be a separate experience. Everything the user does there is private and not tracked, so users can be assured of their safety. None of it affects the pin recommendation algorithm.
The proactive effort to provide relevant information in search results for stress related terms might be the nudge that some at-risk users need to decide to work towards decreasing stress and increasing emotional well being in their lives. Stress has been linked to numerous mental and physical problems and decreasing its effect on our lives can help improve our quality of life.
The company plans to continue exploring additional resources and tools to add in the future.
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