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2023 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Experience of Students in Using Online Mental Health Interventions: A Qualitative Study

Authors : Olugbenga Oti, Claudette Pretorius, Ian Pitt

Published in: ICT for Health, Accessibility and Wellbeing

Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland

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Abstract

Online mental health interventions have been posited as a way to reduce the mental health treatment gap among students in higher education. The effectiveness of these interventions is often limited by low user adherence. A potential solution is to improve user adherence by producing user-centred interventions.

A total of 452 students from University College Cork, Ireland participated in the survey, “Tell us About Your Mental Health Post-COVID-19”. The survey examined students’ mental health over the past year, their use of technological supports, their use of mental health support services and their ratings of mental health support services used.

This study explores students’ experiences with technological support. The thematic analysis of 138 open-ended responses produced seven main themes: 1) Appeal 2) Barriers to Use 3) Discovery 4) Drawbacks 5) Purpose 6) Reasons for Stopping and 7) Usage Patterns. The results of this study revealed students’ openness to using online mental health resources. It also revealed the barriers and facilitators to their use of these resources. Finally, based on our findings, we provide recommendations to researchers/designers developing online mental health interventions for university students. Some of these recommendations were to ensure safety in online communities, provide good user interfaces, support students in crises and improve the accessibility of online resources to students with learning disabilities.

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Title: Experience of Students in Using Online Mental Health Interventions: A Qualitative Study
Authors: Olugbenga Oti
Claudette Pretorius
Ian Pitt
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland
Book: ICT for Health, Accessibility and Wellbeing
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-29547-8

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-29548-5

Copyright Year: 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29548-5_9

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