Perceived Effectiveness and Motivations for the Use of Web-Based Mental Health Programs: Qualitative Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The prevalence of depression is high and has been stable despite increased treatment, research, and dissemination. People encounter barriers to seeking traditional mental health services, which could be mitigated by using web-based prevention methods. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to understand what people at high risk for depression perceive as effective aspects of web-based mental health programs and what motivates people at high risk for depression to use web-based mental health programs. METHODS: We conducted an inductive content analysis using telephone interview data from 77 participants at high risk for depression who were recruited from 2 randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Participants from the first RCT were working men who had been randomly assigned to 1 of the following 3 groups: control group, who had access to general depression information from a website called BroMatters; intervention group 1, who had access to the BroMatters website along with the associated BroHealth web-based mental health program; and intervention group 2, who had access to the BroMatters website, the BroHealth web-based mental health program, and telephone sessions with a life coach. Participants from the second RCT were men and women who had been assigned to the intervention group, who received access to the HardHat web-based mental health program, or the control group, who only received access to the HardHat web-based mental health program following completion of the RCT. Participants for this inductive content analysis study were recruited from the intervention groups in both RCTs. Two groups of participants (n=41 and n=20) were recruited from the BroHealth RCT, and a third group comprised 16 participants that were recruited from the HardHat RCT. RESULTS: We generated four categories regarding the perceived effectiveness of web-based programs and five categories related to what motivates the use of web-based programs. Participants identified awareness, program medium and functionality, program content, and coaches as categories related to the effectiveness of the programs. Categories of motivators to use web-based programs included providing reminders or incentives, promotion of the programs, providing appropriate medium and functionality, appropriate content, and perceived need. The final category related to motivators reflects perceptions of participants who were either unsure about what motivates them or believed that there is no way to motivate use. CONCLUSIONS: Conflicting evidence was obtained regarding the perceived effectiveness of aspects of the content and functionality of web-based programs. In general, web-based mental health programs were perceived to help increase mental health awareness, especially when it includes live access to a coach. However, the results also revealed that it is difficult to motivate people to begin using web-based mental health programs. Strategies that may motivate the use of such programs include perceived personal need, effective promotion, providing incentives and reminders, and improving functionality.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.020 | 0.029 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".