Mental health is not something that is often discussed because it is a touchy topic for people that struggle with mental illness. They are looked down upon for being different, being ill. These people face shame and judgment because of the stigma that follows mental health. According to Sam in his 2016 Mental Health Matters blog titled “How You Can And Why You Should Raise Mental Health Awareness,” “society has made mental health illnesses seem like a bad thing which is why people hide having them.” He wrote this particular blog with a hope to encourage more people to educate themselves on the topic of mental health. If there were more people understanding what mental health and mental illness are, there will be more awareness and together, we can help all of those that are struggling. If anyone is interested in helping to raise awareness about mental health, they could learn how to do so from reading Sam’s blog.
After reading Sam’s blog, I am confident that Sam is not a credible writer because he fails to provide sources for the information that he writes about in his blog. In order for me to come to that decision, I followed the “Evaluating Internet Sources” article from Georgetown University to come to that conclusion about Sam’s credibility. The University’s website states that information on the Internet is not controlled, which means the information is not always accurate. The website also provides a guideline for readers to use and verify an author’s credibility. After going through each category to confirm if Sam is plausible as a writer for mental health, I believe that he is not because of his lack of source credibility. Moreover, he doesn’t meet a lot of the points from the University’s page to qualify as a trustworthy writer such as: lack of credentials (his name, occupation, profession and contact information were not listed anywhere). Moreover, he only introduced himself as Sam, with no last name for his readers to find him on the Internet, or accurately credit him in their text.
Doubts of Credibility:
Sam merely introduces himself to his readers, which was just his name, what he does (write blogs for depression), and that he owns a blog called Depression for Teens. Sadly, I am unable to locate his blog anywhere on the Internet. At the end of the page, Sam also included his Twitter @ for his readers to find him but no credentials about Sam is posted either. With no luck in finding any personal or contact information and therefore, I switched my direction to checking and verifying the website that posted Sam’s blog. One of the points from the University’s guideline led me to question if Sam works for Mental Health Matters, or if he’s sponsored by them in any way but he isn’t. Some other things I discovered include MHMatters, a website that gives information about mental health to concerned individuals whether they are professionals, consumers, victims, supports, etc… When I found myself on the “About Us” section of the page, I learned that MHMatters was founded by a woman named Judy Castelli. Castelli ran the website for five year and later sold it to Ryan House, the principal owner of Athen Media LLC.
Besides the lack of personal information about himself, I determined that Sam does not qualify as a credible writer because his blog contains no sources. I’m talking no hyperlink, no citation for the “facts” he wrote, no source at all. Without any of those, readers are unable to verify any factual information written. He starts off his blog telling the readers, “mental health illnesses affect 1 in 4 people,” and as the reader, I have no clue where Sam retrieved that kind of statistic. Sam wrote his blog using no primary source to back up any of his points, and there are many of them.
The following bullet points are recovered from Sam’s blog in his exact words:
- One in four people will experience a mental health problem in any given year
- Up to 10% of England’s population will suffer from depression at some point in their life
- 50 million people are affected by depression
- Over 800,000 people die due to suicide every year
- Suicide is the 2nd largest cause of death among 15–29-year-olds.
- Suicide is the most common cause of death for men between 20–49 years in England and Wales
- Over 90% of people who die from suicide have a mental health illness at the time of their death
Yet, no indication of where these facts and statistics can be found.
In the final analysis, Sam is not a credible writer due to the reason that he has no credentials listed anywhere on the Internet. There is absolutely no contact information for or about the writer at all. He’s written a good blog to help raise awareness for mental health but provided his readers with no sources for them to check his facts. For all that they know, none of the things Sam wrote are true or trustworthy. I suppose that the readers can fact-check the written information but that would still serve Sam as an untrustworthy writer.
Work Cited:
Sam. “How You Can And Why You Should Raise Mental Health Awareness | MHM.” Mental Health Matters, 25 Oct. 2018, mental-health-matters.com/how-you-can-and-why-you-should-raise-mental-health-awareness/.
