Finalist category: Digital Health Award
#T4GThoughtSort
Finalist, 2016
Shift.ms is the only community dedicated to recently diagnosed people with multiple Sclerosis (MSers), providing a positive, enabling online community for over 9,500 MSers, empowering them to acknowledge their MS, rethink how to achieve their ambitions and get on with their lives. A diagnosis of MS can cause low self-esteem, anxiety, depression and withdrawal. To support the community on a daily basis, they have created a new online tool, Thought Sort.
Thought Sort helps users make sense of the unhelpful feelings that arise with MS. The Thought Record highlights different unhelpful thinking styles and common examples from the Shift.ms community. Users can then record their own unhelpful thoughts, ask for support from other Shift.ms community members, and try out a variety of activities that others have found helpful. This log can prove incredibly useful the next time unhelpful thoughts intrude.
Users can personalise the tool, choosing one of three ‘guides’ who will talk them through the Thought Record in a text chat conversation. Each guide uses a different tone and language, and will take a different approach to supporting the user – from a more ‘clinical’ feel, using proven CBT therapy techniques, to a peer-to-peer approach, similar to the support available at Shift.ms. Or you could pick Lolz, lightening the tone and making the process more relaxed with a comedic guide.
A recent Tavistock Institute evaluation of Shift.ms showed:
– 72% of members benefited from peer-to-peer support
– 60% of members reported a beneficial effect on coping with their MS and getting on with life
– 42% of members agreed that their use of Shift.ms has made them feel less anxious about their MS
This shows that tools like Thought Sort are making a real difference to the lives of people living with MS.
Finalists for the Digital Health Award, Shift.ms are supporting people with MS every day, through an alternative approach to therapy. Visit the Thought Sort website for more information. To find out who won the Digital Health Award, visit the Winners 2016 page.
