Badawi Erfan, Coursaris Constantinos K, Sénécal Sylvain, Léger Pierre-Majorique
Department of Information Technologies, HEC Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Department of Marketing, HEC Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Front Digit Health. 2023 Mar 22;5:1040739. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2023.1040739. eCollection 2023.
Digital mental health intervention (DMHI) programs offered in schools present a readily-accessible and flexible means for educating, empowering, and supporting adolescents in maintaining a balanced mental health, especially during uncertain and stressful times such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent studies indicate that the effectiveness of DMHI programs in improving students' mental well-being and in preventing from their mental health complications depends on the users' engagement. This study focuses on identifying the user experience factors that can facilitate user engagement with universal school-based DMHI programs (i.e., the DMHI programs delivered to the students regardless of their mental health risks or conditions). To identify said factors, we sought to gain a deeper understanding of perceptions, opinions, and preferences of actual end-users (i.e., the adolescents) regarding their experiences with both digital and non-digital mental health resources. Specifically, interviews were conducted with two participant groups to uncover the reasons that could lead the adolescents to better engage with school-based DMHI programs, as well as the shortcomings that could prevent that from happening: (a) adolescent users who had either a high or a low level of engagement with universal DMHI programs of a specific school-based digital mental health solution; and (b) adolescents who had voluntarily used non-digital or non-school-based digital mental health resources for purposes other than treatment. Through a thematic analysis of interview data, the most important (or primary) and the additionally desirable (or secondary) factors that could lead to a higher engagement level for school-based DMHI programs were identified. Lastly, using the evidence gathered from our interviews, specific recommendations are proposed that could help in targeting each identified engagement factor and in increasing the likelihood that school-based DMHI programs achieve their desired outcome for high school students.
学校提供的数字心理健康干预（DMHI）项目为教育、赋能和支持青少年保持心理健康平衡提供了一种易于获取且灵活的方式，尤其是在诸如新冠疫情这样不确定和压力大的时期。最近的研究表明，DMHI项目在改善学生心理健康和预防心理健康问题方面的有效性取决于用户的参与度。本研究聚焦于确定能够促进用户参与基于学校的通用DMHI项目（即无论学生心理健康风险或状况如何都向其提供的DMHI项目）的用户体验因素。为了确定这些因素，我们试图更深入地了解实际终端用户（即青少年）对数字和非数字心理健康资源体验的看法、意见和偏好。具体而言，我们对两个参与群体进行了访谈，以揭示可能导致青少年更好地参与基于学校的DMHI项目的原因，以及可能阻碍这一情况发生的缺点：（a）对特定基于学校的数字心理健康解决方案的通用DMHI项目参与度高或低的青少年用户；（b）出于治疗以外目的自愿使用非数字或非学校数字心理健康资源的青少年。通过对访谈数据的主题分析，确定了可能导致基于学校的DMHI项目更高参与度的最重要（或主要）和额外期望（或次要）因素。最后，利用我们从访谈中收集的证据，提出了具体建议，这些建议有助于针对每个确定的参与因素，并增加基于学校的DMHI项目实现其对高中生预期效果的可能性。
