• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 15, 2020

Twitter worked with more than 60 mental health partners worldwide to raise awareness and help break the stigma that too many people use its platform to spread hate.

It’s difficult to think of Twitter as a positive channel for brands to form relationships with consumers and advertise when the streams are full of unhealthy and hateful views.

Using hashtags #LetsTalk and #TogetherWeCan, partners in May inspired a series of “honest, global mental health conversations.” The topics ranged from anxiety to the stress that families, peers, educators, students, and vulnerable groups experienced. 

Hashtags and bespoke emoji were translated into more than 30 languages worldwide. Twitter said there were numerous creative uses during #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek and #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth, including live Twitter Q+As with mental health organizations, people sharing mental health tips and resources and people opening up about their individual mental health concerns. 

The company may want to bring the conversation together with healthy dialog, but many more people turn to Twitter to vent their political and other frustrations, using the platform to share their anxiety and which is then fueled by others.

Mental health emoji and hashtags in May were shared nearly 170,000 times on Twitter, promoting access to mental health resources from more than 70 global mental health organizations.

Twitter also donated Ads for Good grants for mental health partners to tweet their messages and campaigns.

In one example, Samaritans of Thailand launched an Ask Me Anything on-service Q+A, where people on Twitter had the opportunity to ask questions about their mental health stresses and have them answered and supported by @Samaritans_Thai experts.

The Q+A used hashtag #AskSamaritansTH and the bespoke mental health hashtags #UsapTayo and #  — all through Twitter’s @NonProfits account to further promote the insights and resources published throughout the on-service Q+A.  

Key themes included how to deal with feelings of guilt, how to manage social anxieties, and where to go to for support. 

Mental health awareness and treatment remains a critical global issue. Through the Twitter @NonProfits account, the company developed a Twitter List of its mental health partner profiles and resources for people to access as needed on the service. 

For those searching for help, through the Twitter @Policy account the company created a #LetsTalk Moment to highlight reach and engagement these types of conversations can enable globally.