Hi everyone, my name is Bowen. I've suffered from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder for over 5 years now. I had to give up my dream, my school, my hobbies and more to this horrific yet underrated disease. So as I recover, I decided to use my own experiences to help others suffering from the same disease or basically all mental illnesses. You might heard about this kind of stories a lot, but here's why I think I can stand out from the others.

Before my OCD changed my life, I was a young iOS programmer that had spoken several times at large events and TEDx stage. There was even a piece about me on Forbes China. But when my OCD started to take over me, I had to give up everything just to become mentally well.

Albert Pine said: what we do for ourselves, dies with us. But what we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. And I believe it. One day, I was talking to a teen in the online support group, she told me that many others are committing suicides just because they keep everything to themselves. They don't think their parents, siblings, friends or therapists would understand them.

Then I finally realized that it’s time to help others. So today, I would like to talk about from my perspective, how can we use the power of the Internet to better help other mental health patients.

The current issue with the way major mental health foundation is that they don't use the power of Internet to the full extent. Often, they have websites with bad design and no online events at all. Yes, you can say they focus more on offline and local events, but this is 21st century and we are able to access information from all over the world. An event to help mental health patients should not be limited by the size of a venue, city or even country. Of course, some of the mental health foundations joined social media, but they are still trying to raise attention through the old-fashioned way.

So that's why started OCD Acceptance, using my programming and technology skills, I'm taking the advantage of Internet to help as many people out there as I can. I started the website with daily memes. Meme is this new type of media that is basically a photo with a caption on it. They are simple and easy to understand, but sometimes can be very powerful. I worked hard by myself, updating daily with new memes about OCD. There are over 220 memes on our website now in just over a year. That’s just incredible.

People nowadays enjoy fast-food options more than long and dry articles. A large portion of trending posts on Facebook or Twitter are just simply a meme or a quote. This shows that people are spending more and more time on gathering pieces of information to gain more knowledge on different subjects. That’s why I hope my memes can bring awareness to the disease.

I introduced a new version of OCD Acceptance about a month ago. I added several sections to my website including Friend blogs, a platform where I review other OCD blogs on the Internet to help patients find the best ones faster and simpler; resource, a 8-page long database with tons of resources online that’s related to OCD, categorized for others to find.

The Youtube is always crowded with reviews of different things: gadgets, books, movies and more. Why? Well, for a similar reason to why people choose memes over long articles. They need information, in the fastest and the most straightforward way. So do the OCD sufferers and their families. They don’t have the time or skill to look through all the big data of OCD, they require and demand a simpler way to achieve the ultimate goal: to overcome the disease.

I didn't stop there, recently, I started a new cause. I will host some live sessions crowdfunded by the members of the website. The money raised will go to the professional who will give the lecture. And the members also get to ask questions in the end of the live talk.

This gives the patients and family members an awesome way to talk to and ask questions with mental health professionals and advocates. The people we invited to join the talk are doing an amazing job in their fields, and most of the time they are very busy, even I can’t get to talk to them, but for once in a while, they will clear an hour or more on their calendar and sits down with us to share their insights and answer questions!

In addition to that, the topic they will be talking about is voted by the members online from across the world. It would be a challenge for our speakers but very beneficial for the sufferers. Imagining the best mental health professionals and advocates talking about the topic that they are interested in, how rare is that.

Furthermore, if someone with mental illnesses ever experience a low mood or need some assistance with their disease, they can simply send us a message via our Facebook page of OCD Acceptance. And our staff will get back to them within an hour. Seriously, within an hour. Facebook acknowledges us with a badge of very-fast response. And it’s true.

I believe in 21st century, the global burden of mental health should be one of our major focus. We need to work with each other seamlessly throughout the world to bring the best solution to our problems. Using the Internet, we can do that, with some efforts and visions. With every old system or traditional industry, there’s an opportunity to make it better somehow. We used to find it hard to catch a taxi, now with Uber, we don’t even bother to take taxis anymore. With social medias, we realize that newspaper is not that necessary to be honest. However, just like Uber and online social medias, the goal is not to replace the old way of how things work, it’s to be a supplement to it.

People sometimes ask me “What is OCD Acceptance?” OCD Acceptance is a tool. A tool that help you OCD sufferer with the power of Internet. There are ton of free resources on our website, an active Facebook page and Twitter account and this weekly event that give you an opportunity to be closer to the mental health professionals and advocates.

This article is not an ad. I'm not writing to you as a page admin, I'm writing as an OCD sufferer who is trying to help others. That's our entire goal. We don't care about fame, money or other superficial things, we only care if we can help other OCD sufferers our there. Thank you so much!

Bowen