Web 2.0 & Stress Management

Like many of my fellow graduate peers, we experience periods of high stress when family, work and personal life events occur at the same time. Some good, some not so good. While doing a Google scholar search, I found an article on stress management techniques suited to engage individuals with web 2.0 tools. The authors, Åsa Smedberg and Hélène Sandmark (can be found here):http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:386481/FULLTEXT02 highlight several areas of need in stress management healthcare including a conceptual framework for treating patients with web based programs. The authors outline multiple design principles needed to engage patients with healthcare programs suited to the information age mirroring many instructional design principles in education. Specifically, the authors suggest incorporating multimedia to engage patients through synchronous and asynchronous communication, with an emphasis on visually immersive content to treat patients. In addition, the authors emphasize continuous and iterative support therapies for patients and suggest having more collaborative platforms (wikis, blogs, conversation threads) where patients and medical professionals express motivational issues. Also, embedded feedback and self-report measures help doctors track patient progress. Overall, a good read when feeling that mid-summer malaise.