Developing a quit smoking website that is usable by people with severe mental illnesses.

Abstract

The website usability recommendations provide some guidelines for interventionists developing web tools for people who experience serious psychiatric disabilities. In general, insights from the study highlight the need for thoughtful design and usability testing when creating a website for people with severe mental illness.

Carbon monoxide feedback in a motivational decision support system for nicotine dependence among smokers with severe mental illnesses

“…We selected a behavioral rather than psychological measure of motivation because initiation of treatment is a stronger predictor of successful smoking cessation (Culhane et al, 2008) than assessments of intention or other psychological measures. Initiation of cessation treatment was assessed by blinded research staff at baseline and two-month follow-up with the Behavioral Motivation Index (Brunette, Ferron, McHugo, et al, 2011). This checklist assessed initiation of cessation medication and attendance at behavioral treatment for smoking cessation, as well as other clinician contact regarding smoking cessation.…”

“…The web-based motivational decision support system was designed and tailored for smokers with severe mental illnesses (Brunette, Ferron, McHugo, et al, 2011). Similar to in-person interventions for this population, the system provides information and exercises that aim to increase awareness of the pros and cons of smoking, including its' health risks, via education, assessment, and feedback.…”

“…Heightening the focus on health effects by giving feedback may particularly benefit people with schizophrenia and severe mood disorders given that attention impairments are associated with these disorders (Reichenberg et al, 2009). Although carbon monoxide monitor feedback has been a component of motivational interventions for smokers with severe mental illnesses (Cather et al, 2010;Steinberg et al, 2004;Williams et al, 2010;Williams, Ziedonis, Vreeland, & Speelman-Edwards, 2009), including a computerized motivational decision support system we developed (Brunette, Ferron, McHugo, et al, 2011), research on the effect of carbon monoxide monitor feedback as a stand-alone intervention on smoking outcomes in the general population has been equivocal (Bize, Burnand, Mueller, & Cornuz, 2009;McClure, Ludman, Grothaus, Pabiniak, & Richards, 2009). Further, this type of feedback has not been used in many of the motivational interventions used in the general population (Lai, Cahill, Qin, & Tang, 2010).…”

BETTER-Project: Web Accessibility for Persons with Mental Disorders

“…Good and Sambhanthan [11] reported several website elements that people with depression and anxiety identified as being accessibility issues: distracting design, confusing menu options, poor navigation, time limited response forms, information overload, non-perceivable icons, slow response in websites loading information, poor organisation and presentation complicated language, poor content filters, excessive advertisements, and complex purchasing processes. Ferron et al [12] and Rotondi et al [10] concluded that people with severe mental disorders require sites that explicitly state instructions for their use, feature a shallow hierarchy of pages, use clear and explicit labels, large navigational cues and pop-up menus to reduce clicking. Findings from Rotondi et al [10] also reveal that these Web accessibility needs are distinct and are not covered by existing guidance and or Web-interface models.…”

“…A thorough keyword search of several databases (i.e., MEDLINE, PsycARTICLES, CINAHL, Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts, Computers and Applied Sciences Complete, ACM Digital Library, SpringerLink, OpenGrey) for Web accessibility, mental disorders and related terms only returned 3 directly relevant results (i.e., [10][11][12] as discussed earlier).…”