Building Social Support On Line

Using the Internet to Build Social Support: Implications for Well-being and Hope
 Kathy Weingarten, PH.D.
When my friend Abby called my husband and me one Saturday night in April, I knew that it could only be bad news. Her voice was hyper-calm, as if emotion would splay her thoughts into fragments, like shrapnel through bone. And, good news can wait until morning.

Did we know how to arrange a medi-vac from Mexico to the United States she implored us, a question so out of range of our experience that contact and comfort had to be the sub-text. Moments before she had learned that her nephew, David Carmel--a young man who had been one of the founders of Jumpstart, a national, non-profit organization training college-students to help preschoolers prepare to succeed in school--had had an accident while diving into the waves in Mexico. On that April evening, she knew that he could not move his legs or hands, and that his sense of humor and compassion were intact. On vacation with friends, after his accident, he was still the consummate organizer. He had provided the phone numbers for the people he wanted called and suggested songs to sing while evacuating him from the beach.

My husband and I began making phone calls about the medi-vac. Superfluously. An hour later, armed with numbers, we called Abby to learn that he was already en route to a hospital in San Diego.

I kept in daily touch with Abby about David, his family, and her experience. In July, I learned that David's friends had designed a web page for him. Intrigued, I went to my computer, logged on, and was amazed by what I saw. 

Full article available online at psycnet.apa.org

Review 

This article shares the experience of Jehane Noujaim, a young woman and friend to paralysis victim David Carmel. Through Jehane’s experience, author Kathy Weingarten, PH.D, demonstrates the potential for the internet to be used as a tool for linking “a seriously ill or injured person to his community” and for establishing and sustaining practices of hope. The use and creation of online media as a tool for connecting family and friends to an individual who may otherwise miss out on valuable social interaction, is an example of online media being used to maintain and improve the social, and mental wellbeing of individuals (Weingarten – 2000). Which are both play a very important part in the mental health of an individual (Kawachi, Berkman – 2001).

 

Jehane’s learnt of her friend’s accident in April 2000. Over the phone, she was told that David Carmel (a young man and co-founder of the non for profit program jumpstart) had been injured in a diving accident in Mexico. Jehane kept in touch with David’s family and subsequently learned that a website had been created for him.

The website www.davidcarmel.com was designed to inform David’s friends and family about his condition and recovery, as well as allow them to keep in contact, schedule visits and find more information about paralysis in general.

According to David’s parents "The web site produced an outpouring from David's friends. He didn't have the strength to respond but it answered a question he had, 'Will people still be my friends if I'm in a wheelchair?' The web site answered that question. It said, 'Yes!' The beauty of the web site is that he can respond when he wants, when he is able..."

The website served to maintain the social and mental wellbeing, of both David and the people in his life. “David sees the purposes as those of informing and connecting”.  Kathy Weingarten extends upon David’s description of the purpose of the website by discussing how in her recent writings she has tried to think about the nature of intimacy, (Weingarten, 1999), and the nature of hope (Weingarten, 1991, 1992, 1997).  

“Hope, I believe, is not only a feeling but something we do with others. People can do hope together, and they often do so in community.”  The web site created to connect David Carmel with his community can be seen as an exemplar of "doing hope”.

. Weingarten states that as a profetinal who works with patients of seriously illness or injurury and their families, she understands the importance of social support, she belives that  “A web site (like www.davidcarmel.com ) provides a specific forum for a specific kind of social support, that which comes from participating in the collective practice of hope.”

Reference

Weingarten, K. - Using the Internet to Build Social Support: Implications for Well-being and Hope - Fam Syst & Health - 2000

Ichiro Kawachi, Lisa F. Berkman – social ties in mental health - Journal of Urban Health, 2001

Weingarten, K. - "The discourses of intimacy: Adding a social constructionist and feminist view" - Family Process - 1991

Weingarten, K. - "A consideration of intimate and non-intimate interactions in therapy" - Family Process - 1992

Weingarten, K. Doing Hope - Manuscript Submitted for Publication - 1999