Searching for Mental Health: A Mixed-Methods Study of Young People's Online Help-seeking

Abstract

Seeking help is often an important step in addressing mental health difficulties. Evidence suggests that positive helpseeking experiences contribute to an increased likelihood of future help-seeking and achieving improved outcomes. However, help-seeking is a complex process. Alongside traditional sources, digital technologies offer many pathways to help. Using a mixed methods approach across two studies, this paper explores key design factors for online mental health resources that can support young people's helpseeking. First, a large online survey (n=1308) highlighted challenges and identified common help-seeking scenarios, including information-seeking, person-centred approaches and crisis situations. Using survey data, personas were developed to represent different help-seekers -each characterised by a particular help-seeking scenario. The personas were then used in co-design workshops to facilitate further exploration of help-seeking needs. Four key design considerations were identified: connectedness, accessible information, personalisation, and immediacy. Based on our findings, we provide design recommendations that are grounded in existing theories of help-seeking.

Recommendations for Designing Health Information Technologies for Mental Health Drawn From Self-Determination Theory and Co-design With Culturally Diverse Populations: Template Analysis

“…Our results are broadly consistent with previous research, reflecting the importance of promoting social connection [ 32 , 46 ], personalization and customization [ 36 , 46 ], clear and casual language [ 36 ], and addressing data security and privacy concerns [ 7 , 49 ].…”

“…Our results also suggest that any recommendations from participants should be evaluated through the lens of self-determination theory, with explicit consideration given to how each suggested change could promote each of the basic psychological needs. This is in line with previous research on applying self-determination theory to help seeking for mental health problems [ 45 , 46 ]. This measured evaluation is important given that many participant suggestions involved broad concepts or specifications and may reveal that further expertise needs to be consulted.…”

“…The design recommendations approximately map to the 3 basic psychological needs proposed by self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, and relatedness [ 41 ]. As mentioned before, self-determination theory is a theory of motivation (including both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) that has been applied to the design of health technologies [ 44 , 47 ] as well as web-based help seeking for mental health problems [ 45 , 46 ]. The fact that we found our workshop findings to align with self-determination theory constructs is a further support for its application to the design and delivery of HITs.…”

“…Importantly, although our core design recommendations map neatly onto the 3 basic psychological needs, how they are executed in practice can simultaneously support multiple needs [ 46 ]. For example, from our data, we found technological accessibility to be a blend of usability (ease of use), control (eg, customizing visual elements such as font size), and affirmation (inclusiveness) and avoiding clinical jargon to be a blend of usability (not using difficult terminology) and affirmation (avoiding making users feel reduced to a diagnosis).…”

“…Although self-determination theory is originally a theory of intrinsic motivation, human-computer interaction research has found it to be applicable to user engagement with digital technologies [ 43 , 44 ]. Self-determination theory has also been successfully applied to user needs, facilitators, and barriers for mental health technologies [ 45 , 46 ].…”