Profile Post: PsychPedia by Adil Ali
For this week’s post, I looked at PsychPedia, a blog run by Adil Ali. Ali is a self-proclaimed “passionate healthcare worker, mental health administrator, clinical psychologist, [and a] blogger & bookworm.” Judging by his credentials, he has done a lot of research in the psychology field and enjoys sharing information through his blog. His posts center on a wide variety of topics and he looks at them with a psychological perspective. Some of the subjects he discusses are brain injuries, lifestyle changes, communication methods, and mental illness.
Ali is passionate about updating his blog. Although I was unable to find the posting dates of many of his articles, he has been posting to PsychPedia since April 2013 and has over 150 posts available and 19 blog followers. Additionally, he has 135 followers on Google Plus. Ali writes in a formal tone and supports his claims with quotes and research. He approaches all topics in a deliberate and informational manner, and the layout of his blog is simple and easy to navigate — he has several headings that have sorted his articles into the different types of mental disorders. He also features his most popular posts for his readers.
I chose to focus on two of his posts: Is Social Media Dependence A Mental Health Issue and Instagram is worst for your mental health, study finds.
In the first post, Ali discusses how the overuse of social media has been shown to have serious detrimental effects on teenage users. Ali first brings in supporting research about social media dependency, then relates it to the field of psychology by talking about the chemical brain reactions that occur when this addiction forms. He then furthers his investigation and talks about underlying issues of social media; he mentions how social media behaviors translate into other addictive behaviors, such as drug use and eating disorders. He then conducts a literature review and brings in many other experts on the subject. Ali is careful to make a sweeping generalization and acknowledges the benefits of social media and also concludes by leaving the issue up for debate.
Ali’s second post is brief and summaries a study he found about the impacts of different social media platforms. This post is less of a debate and is written in a more informative style. This post seems to be one of his earlier posts; it is not as well-written and is very brief, with quotes thrown in without much support. However, the quotes that he chose are from academic sources and it is easy to understand why he chose to include them.
By reading a few of Ali’s blog posts, it is evident that he has invested a lot of time in researching and writing these posts. While his earliest posts are very surface-level discussions, improvement is very visible throughout his posts and his later posts thoroughly delve into his topics of focus. Unfortunately, PsychPedia does not have a public place for others to comment, but Ali is available to connect with on Google Plus.
