IT'S official - I am a twit. We launched Gofal Cymru's Facebook and Twitter pages a couple of weeks ago and I am now totally addicted to Twitter.

Using social media is something we've talked about for a long time. Now we've started, my only regret is that we didn't do it a long time ago.

As a Welsh organisation, it's enabling us to build links with mental health charities based in Wales, in other parts of the UK and across the world.

We're able to keep up-to-date with what each other is doing, and show support for each others' campaigns.

Just as importantly we're able to follow, and contribute to, conversations that individuals are having about mental health and wellbeing.

There's an extremely active online community exchanging tips for keeping mentally healthy, debating how to tackle stigma, sharing thoughts and experiences.

Interestingly one of the hot topics of the moment is the relationship between internet use and mental ill health.

A recent academic study suggested a strong link between heavy internet use and depression but a lot of the comments I've been reading suggest that people feel the internet - and social networking in particular - can also play a very positive role in their recovery.

I suppose that, as with most things, it's about getting the right balance. The real strength and also the real risk with the online world is the totally unregulated nature of the information available.

We've come across discussions on Facebook pages that have really shocked us in terms of the abusive and threatening language being used towards people experiencing mental ill health.

What we've had to remind ourselves is that these conversations have always taken place behind closed doors, it's just that now they're online for the world to see. The internet can, however, also be used to tackle bigotry, generate debate and raise awareness.

Time to Change - England's anti-stigma campaign - is using Facebook and Twitter to keep its supporters up-to-date and has an amazing online visual pledge where people post their photo onto a mosaic as a way of signalling that they believe discrimination should end.

At Gofal Cymru we've been working with other mental health charities lobbying for an anti-stigma campaign in Wales. Last week we launched an online petition asking people to sign up in support of this campaign, and we're hoping we can use the networks we've started to build online to attract greater support than we would have been able to do previously.

The internet has given people access to vast amounts of information, including a much wider range of mental health resources than could ever have been held in a library or a GP surgery. Now the growing popularity of social networking sites is allowing people from all over the world to come together and share their thoughts and expertise.

These platforms give individuals the opportunity to support each other and to challenge each others' views. We might not always like what we hear, but the very fact we can now join in the conversation makes me feel it really is a brave new world.

And on that note I'm off to have a quick tweet.

Ewan Hilton is executive director of mental health charity Gofal Cymru. To email reply@gofalcymru .org.uk Links to the Facebook and Twitter accounts and the online petition are available at www.gofalcymru.org.uk