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Searching for Mental Health: A Mixed-Methods Study of Young People's Online Help-seeking
Date Issued
2020-04-19
Date Available
2021-02-09T09:43:35Z
Abstract
Seeking help is often an important step in addressing mental health difficulties. Evidence suggests that positive help-seeking 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 help-seeking. 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.
Sponsorship
Science Foundation Ireland
Other Sponsorship
Insight Research Centre
Type of Material
Conference Publication
Copyright (Published Version)
2020 the Authors
Web versions
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
Part of
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Conference Details
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Honolulu, United States of America, 25-30 April 2020 (cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak)
ISBN
978-1-4503-6708-0/20/04
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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