Dear in2mentalhealth visitor, reader, fan,
Somewhere in the last 6 years you visited and maybe started following the in2mentalhealth website. Thank you for that! Although being a blogger and admin was a great adventure and pleasure, I decided to quit updating and blogging recently. New updates on Twitter and Facebook will also be very limited from now on.
The first reason for my decision is that I don’t have enough time to continue with this work properly. I can’t keep up with all the new information and developments. I’m a clinical psychologist and my main and paid job is in an outpatient mental health clinic in the Netherlands. This exciting work, together with some study and local volunteering work, is consuming all my time and energy at this moment.
The other reason is that at the start of in2mentalhealth in 2010, there was hardly anything on global mental health and psychosocial support on the internet. I was one of the very first and few information brokers at that time. Nowadays you can find many interesting and valuable information and network sites and social media pages to visit and follow. The necessity to blog and circulate helpful information with the in2mentalhealth website has vanished over the last 6 years, which is actually good.
I still think that the new technologies like apps, SMS and internet, are not enough used in the field of global mental health and psychosocial support. Still some material is not free accessible on the internet (like the book ‘Where there is no Psychiatrist’). And still, for example, the WHO mhGAP Intervention Guide is not available on a smart phone and tablet app! These are still considerable annoyances for me. I hope my blog posts and updates in the last six years have contributed to some progress in this field, but still much has to been explored and developed. My hope, in this regard, is now on the new generation mental health workers, service users and policy makers. Maybe on you?
So, dear visitor, reader, fan, thank you so much for visiting my website and reading my blog posts and updates.
And I wish all of you a very good, healthy, inspiring and fruitful 2017!
Roos Korste, psychologist and international trainer, Netherlands