Bhattacharjee Ananya, Williams Joseph Jay, Chou Karrie, Tomlinson Justice, Meyerhoff Jonah, Mariakakis Alex, Kornfield Rachel
Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada.
Rotman Commerce, University of Toronto, Canada.
Proc ACM Hum Comput Interact. 2022 Nov;6(CSCW2). doi: 10.1145/3555123. Epub 2022 Nov 11.
Adopting new psychological strategies to improve mental wellness can be challenging since people are often unable to anticipate how new habits are applicable to their circumstances. Narrative-based interventions have the potential to alleviate this burden by illustrating psychological principles in an applied context. In this work, we explore how stories can be delivered via the ubiquitous and scalable medium of text messaging. Through formative work consisting of interviews and focus group discussions with 15 participants, we identified desirable elements of stories about mental health, including authenticity and relatability. We then deployed story-based text messages to 42 participants to explore challenges regarding both the stories' content (e.g., specific versus generalized) and format (e.g., story length). We observed that our stories helped participants reflect on and identify flaws in their thinking patterns. Our findings highlight design implications and opportunities for mental wellness interventions that utilize stories in text messaging services.
采用新的心理策略来改善心理健康可能具有挑战性，因为人们往往无法预见新习惯如何适用于他们的情况。基于叙事的干预措施有可能通过在实际应用场景中阐释心理原理来减轻这一负担。在这项研究中，我们探索了如何通过无处不在且可扩展的短信媒介来传递故事。通过对15名参与者进行访谈和焦点小组讨论的形成性研究，我们确定了心理健康故事的理想元素，包括真实性和相关性。然后，我们向42名参与者发送了基于故事的短信，以探讨故事内容（例如，具体与一般）和形式（例如，故事长度）方面的挑战。我们观察到，我们的故事帮助参与者反思并识别他们思维模式中的缺陷。我们的研究结果突出了在短信服务中利用故事进行心理健康干预的设计启示和机会。
