Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health
Date Submitted: Oct 18, 2019
Date Accepted: Apr 3, 2020
Engaging with an online psychosocial intervention for psychosis: A qualitative study of user experiences
ABSTRACT
Background:
Online interventions are being increasingly utilised for individuals with serious mental illness, including psychosis and preliminary evidence suggests clinical benefits. To achieve such benefits, individuals must have some level of engagement with the intervention. Currently, little is known about what influences engagement with online interventions for individuals with psychotic disorders.
Objective:
This study aimed to explore users’ perspectives on what influenced engagement with an online intervention for psychosis.
Methods:
A qualitative design was employed utilising semi-structured telephone interviews. Participants were 17 adults with psychosis who had participated in a trial examining engagement with a self-guided, online intervention promoting personal recovery and self-management of mental health.
Results:
Two overarching themes were identified: ‘Challenges to using the website’ and ‘factors supporting persistence’. Both of the main themes included several subthemes related to both user-related factors (e.g., mental health, personal circumstances, approach to using the site) and users’ experience of the intervention (e.g., having experienced similar content previously, or finding the material confronting).
Conclusions:
Individuals with psychosis experienced several challenges to ongoing engagement with the online intervention. Adjunctive emails present as an important design feature to maintain interest and motivation to engage with the intervention. However, fluctuations in mental health and psychosocial difficulties were a significant challenge. Design and implementation considerations are discussed.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.